The views expressed in FMSO publications and reports are those of the authors and do not
necessarily represent the official policy or position of the Department of the Army,
Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Andrei Kokoshin, the recently fired Secretary of the Russian Security Council, has had
two careers. Both illuminate the theory and practice of military foresight and forecasting in the
Soviet Union and Yeltsin's Russia. One career was that of a scholar of national security policy
specializing in the study of US national security policy and in the military history of Russia and
the Soviet Union. The other career was as a public official in Russia's Ministry of Defense and
national security apparatus. Both careers establish his connections to those figures, past and
present, involved in forecasting future war. Kokoshin began his career as a national security
analyst with the Institute of the United States and Canada (ISKAN) and gained prominence as a
supporter of "reasonable sufficient defense." He played a prominent role in reviving interest in
the writing of General-Major A. A. Svechin. He has continued to write on issues of military
doctrine, civil-military relations, and the revolution in military affairs. In August 1991 he
supported President Yeltsin in his battle with the putchists and in April 1992 Yeltsin appointed
Kokoshin as First Deputy Minister of Defense, the ranking civilian in the Ministry, which was
first headed by President Yeltsin himself and then by General Pavel Grachev. For five years he
served as Deputy Minister of Defense with primary responsibility for the reform of the military-industrial complex. His rise and fall over the last year was meteoric. In May 1997 Yeltsin named
Kokoshin head of the Defense Council and the State Military Inspectorate. In March, Yeltsin
named Kokoshin head of the Security Council, abolished the Defense Council and the Military
Inspectorate, and gave their functions to the Security Council.1 Less than five months later, in
the midst of a deep governmental and financial crisis, Boris Yeltsin removed Kokoshin from his
post as Secretary of the Security Council.

Kokoshin and the Russian Crash

Kokoshin began studying defense issues during his career as a researcher with the
Institute of the USA and Canada (ISKAN) and extend through his tenure as First Deputy
Minister of Defense (1992-1997) to his his tenure in the presidential security apparatus.
Kokoshin's ties to the problem of foreseeing future war are particularly relevant to his rise and
fall. According to the announcement of his appointment, then Prime Minister Chernomyrdin and
Kokoshin were given one month to submit proposals "on military development and army
reform."2 One month later, Boris Yeltsin fired his entire government (prime minister, deputy
prime ministers and ministers) calling into question the relation between Russia's President and
the political elite. Chernomyrdin was gone, replaced by Sergei Kiriyenko, the thirty-five-year-old "reformer" from Nizhni Novgorod with ties to Russia's oil industry and a former Minister of
Energy. Yeltsin also singled out General Anatoliy Kulikov, then Deputy Prime Minister and
Minister of Internal Affairs, for specific mention among those removed from office. Deputy
Prime Minister Anatoliy Chubais, the most prominent market reformer among Yeltsin's team
was also removed from office. Yeltsin's announcement of Kiriyenko's appointment did not,
however, end the governmental crisis. The State Duma refused to confirm his appointment until
April 24. Nor did the new government get a period of stability after that vote. Within in a month
it had to confront a serious national economic crisis -a falling stock market, labor unrest over
wage arrears, and a shortfall in tax revenues. The final collapse of the Russian banking system
and the devaluation of the ruble brought an end to Kiriyenko's brief tenure and President
Yeltsin's nomination of Chernomyrdin to replace him. Kokoshin survived the first of these crises
but not the last. He even managed to make some important progress during this period of
political instability and economic catastrophe.

The political and economic crises made progress on military reform all that more difficult
to achieve. Crippling strikes by coal miners demanding payment of wage arrears at times
effectively closed the vital Trans-Siberian Railroad. An infection of the "Asian financial flu"
became "pneumonia" in Russia and brought about the collapse of the Russian stock market,
called into question the value of the ruble and moved the Russian Central Bank to raise interest
rates to 150%. Meager state revenues had to go to service an exploding short-term debt in the
form of GKOs [treasury bills]. Sergei Rogov, the director of ISKAN, called the vicious cycle of
borrowing at ever higher interest rates to pay off ever large amounts of short-term state debt
nothing more than a "pyramid scheme."3 With fresh support from international financial
institutions (International Monetary Fund and World Bank), Kiriyenko's government responded
with new austerity measures to reduce state spending and pledges of renewed efforts to improve
tax collection. That effort collapsed when the Duma adjourned for its summer recess without
passing many of the proposals. The subsequent nose dive of the Russian stock market, a
deepening crisis in the banking system, a default on foreign and domestic debt and a fifty percent
devaluation of the ruble followed. Finding the funds to pay for military reform, as opposed to
simple force reductions, became simply impossible.

Kokoshin's response to the banking and debt crisis of August 1998 engineeered his own
fall from power. Two weeks into the crisis Russia was still without a sitting government and the
State Duma had twice rejected Yeltsin's nominee for Prime Minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin.
Kokoshin, in his post as Secretary of the Security Council, drafted a letter of recommendations
to the nominee for premiership, Viktor Chernomyrdin. Kokoshin proposed that the Duma and the
government should execute a lightning series of measures to disavow the default on debts, end
the moratorium on payments to foreign and domestic creditors, and recast the roles of the Central
Bank and the Ministry of Finance to ensure the coordination of their policies. 4 The letter
quickly leaked to the press. Response was rapid. In financial circles there was approval. The
measures promised to restore confidence in the markets, state finances, and the ruble. The
response of the presidential apparatus was also rapid. Yeltsin fired Kokoshin and his own deputy
chief of staff. Business circles described the firing as "an unpleasant surprise." Some attributed
the sudden firing of Kokoshin and Sergei Yastrzhemsky, Yeltsin Press Secretary and Deputy
Chief of Staff, to high politics within the presidential administration.5 Indeed, the firing took
place at a moment of crisis for the Yeltsin administration - after the Duma's second vote not to
confirm Chernomyrdin and as the names of other candidates, especially Foreign Minister
Evgenyi Primakov, were being put forward as compromise candidates. How had one of Russia's
leading and most respected experts on defense and security policy managed to get himself into
the very center of Russia's political and economic maelstrom? Rogov offers at least a partial
explanation of this development. Russia's recovery and the sustainment of its status as a great
power depends upon investment and the absence of that investment must mean that Russia must
face a prospect of continued economic decline.

As a result, Russia, which has already found itself playing a secondary role in the world economy, could also lose its status as a military superpower over the next few years. If
the current level of financing is maintained, its nuclear deterrent forces will collapse over
the next few years. Its conventional forces seem to have already lost their fighting
efficiency, as was evident in the Chechen war. In the next two or three years, the Russian
Army will have to be cut down to 12 or 15 divisions. That seems to be the maximum that
the federal budget can sustain. But that level would be clearly insufficient to stage any
kind of war, save for a small border conflict of low intensity.6

In short, the crash and ensuing political vacuum represented another deep shock to a Russian
state system that has been struggling with military reform for almost a decade without much
success. It came at a time when Kokoshin, in spite of fiscal constraints, seemed to have achieved
a position of institutional leverage to move the reform process forward in a direction that would
result in the reconstitution of military power to fit the needs of Russia in a new domestic and
international environment.

Kokoshin has stood at the very center of the reform of the Armed Forces and military
reform at a time of intense political and economic crisis for state and society.7 At the time of his
appointment as Secretary of the Security Council, Russian commentators were divided as to
whether Kokoshin would be able to leverage his new position to bring about progress in military
reform. Some reports emphasized the fact that President Yeltsin had instructed Prime Minister
Chernomyrdin and Kokoshin to submit within the next month "proposals for drafting and
implementing measures for military development of Russia, the reform of the armed forces and
other military formations and bodies."8 Others focused on the high politics of Ivan Rybkin's
appointment to the post of Deputy Prime Minister for CIS Affairs. Ivan Petrov suggested that
Kokoshin's appointment was just a matter of "consolidating the presidential administration and
de facto re-subordinating" of the Defense Council to the Security Council.9 Pavel Felgenhauer,
the defense and national security editor for Segodnya, argued that, because Kokoshin was a
scholar-turned-bureaucrat and lacked a powerful political base to support his new position, he
would fail. Reviewing tenures of past secretaries of the Security Council from Yuri Skokov to
Ivan Rybkin, he concluded that Yeltsin wants no "security tsar" and is incapable of performing
that role himself. After covering ten years of talk of military reform without any action in that
direction, Felgenhauer gave Kokoshin next to no chance of success. "So Kokoshin's new,
seemingly omnipotent position is a joke, and not a real promotion."10 Indeed, at the time of his
firing in September Alexander Konovalov, the President of the Institute of Strategic
Assessments, categorized Kokoshin's moves as quite unexpected for an experienced "bureaucrat"
[chinovnik] and involved Kokoshin promoting the candidacy of Major Yuri Luzhkov for the post
of prime minister in place of Chernomyrdin before the third vote of the Duma. The outcome
would have been a constitutional crisis between the President and the Duma with a continuing
governmental parallysis and deepening economic meltdown.11

At the time of his appointment as Secretary of the Security Council, Kokoshin himself
played down his appointment and the bureaucrat restructuring. At his initial press conference
Kokoshin said that there would be no "revolutionary changes" within the Security Council.
Instead, he stressed the role of the Chernomyrdin government in articulating national security
interests and formulating the appropriate policies to advance those interests and confirmed that
he would work close with the Presidential administration, especially Deputy Chief of
Administration Yegenniy Savostyanov, on personnel matters.12 With the appointment of the
new Prime Minister, leadership of military reform passed to Kiriyenko, who assumed the overall
responsibility for coordinating military reform. But in the context of political and military crises,
military reform received little attention and the deepening financial crisis has made it even more
unlikely that the Russian government will find the resources to engage in military reform. The
only positive development was the announcement in early April that the new Prime Minister
would provide leadership for the military reform effort.13 Kiriyenko did move bureaucratically to
centralize the direction of military reform by abolishing the commission on financing military
reform.14 The fact that Russia faced both a governmental and financial crisis made progress even
more problematic.

The distinction drawn with regard to reform of the armed forces and military reform, is
very relevant to the prospects for successful reform and is closely bound up with the issue of
future war. On the one hand, reform of the Armed Forces refers to the transformation of the
military forces belonging to the Russian Ministry of Defense and involves both downsizing the
force and transformating it into a force that will meet the needs and requirements of Russia in the
post-Cold War era. Military reform, on the other hand, is a more all-embracing process which
encompasses all the military and paramilitary formations of the Russia state and addresses the
core political, economic, and social questions attached to raising, sustaining, training, arming,
deploying, and employing the military as an element of Russian national power. It is closely tied
to the issues of capacity of the national economy to fund national defense and security,
Russia's role and place in the international system and the assessment of the dangers and threats
that affect Russian national security. The fact that Yeltsin had charged the Government and the
Security Council with these tasks, given the recent subordination of the so-called "power
ministries" to the Government had radically changed the stakes in military reform. In examining
the issue of future war it is important to note that Kokoshin not only played a key role as a
bureaucratic linchpin tying together reform of the Armed Forces and military reform through his
recent offices and duties but also intellectually provided a linkage to the most important Russian
efforts at military foresight over the last century.

Kokoshin and Russian/Soviet Past of "Future War"

Foreseeing the nature of future war has a long and distinguished pedigree in Russian
military thought. This year we celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the publication of one of
the ground-breaking works in that field, Jan Bloch's Future War. Bloch, a Jewish-Polish
financier and railroad magnate with close ties to the Russian Ministry of Finance, addressed the
technical, economic, and political aspects of modern, industrial war.15 Bloch combined a detailed
analysis of military technology and the changes it was bringing to the battlefield with a strategic-operational assessment of the role of railroads to conclude that defense would dominate the
offense, making the single, decisive battle impossible. Maneuver would give way to fire
domination and positional warfare. Indecision, when coupled with the capacity of modern
economies to generate war materiels for the front, would turn a general European war into a
protracted and bloody conflict. Modern war in this form would lead to social crisis and
revolution.16 Bloch concluded that a general European war would be so destructive that
statesmen would be prudent and and avoid unleashing one. His pacifism was not utopian but
founded upon pragmatism and pessimism. Behind Bloch's analysis of future war stood several
decades of sustained study of railroads and their impact on the national economy, national
finances, and the study of the Jewish Question and modern Anti-Semitism. Moreover, it rested
upon a methodology that was distinctly modern and interdisciplinary and involved the collective
research of specialists in a research institute.17 Bloch's practical influence on the government of
Nicholas II was limited and short-lived, culminating in the call for a European disarmament
conference. Bloch died in 1902 before the Russo-Japanese War provided its warning of things to
come.

Several points concerning Bloch's study are relevant to our present study. First, they were
the work of a civilian at a time when soldiers were suspicious of such opinions and rejected the
intervention of outsiders into their professional domain, military art. Second, they were
profoundly liberal in spirit and conservative in application. Bloch viewed revolution as a grave
danger, which would unleash untold barbarity. War was its catalyst. Others, most notably Lenin
and the Bolsheviks reached the same conclusion but embraced the prospect of turning a general
European war into the world revolution.18 Third, the work and its method are seen as relevant to
current Russian studies of future war and the Revolution in Military Affairs precisely because we
are again looking at technologies that seem to favor the offense and a strategy of annihilation in
short wars and have once again, after the nuclear hiatus, made war seem to be an appropriate
instrument for "the continuation of politics by other means." Once again, Russia finds itself in a
position of relative backwardness in the face of scientific and technical progress.

Russian military analysts state that the current Revolution in Military Affairs and the new
situation confronting Russia internally and internationally have made Bloch's methodology
relevant today. General Major V. D. Ryabchuk, Russian Army (retired), suggested a
fundamental recasting of military science as complete as that attempted by Bloch in Future War.
Ryabchuk called for serious basic research in the field of military science, using an eclectic
approach of diverse methods and free of ideological control. He sought the emancipation of
military science from the "so-called Marxist-Leninist teachings on war and the army."19
Ryabchuk promoted military systemology [voyennaya sistemologiya] or a shift from force-on-force modeling of conflict to a theory of combat systems.20 Ryabchuk considers this new
methodology as the most productive approach for assessing the impact of the Revolution in
Military Affairs upon military art. Ryabchuk described this new methodology as "modeling and
the functional-structural analysis of armed conflict as a process of mutual interactions of combat
systems of the contending sides."21 The method of military systemology, in fact, stands systems
analysis on its head, emphasizing complexity and the need for models based on dynamic,
evolving, self-organizing systems and emphasizes a shift from modeling combat as force-on-force to system vs. system.22

The Bloch and Kokoshin Tie

Christopher Bellamy, one of the handful of Western military analysts who had taken note
of Soviet military forecasts of the Revolution in Military Affairs, drew attention to the new
problem confronting Russian forecasters: the need to address both political-military and military-technical changes in order to understand the full implications of the revolution. Bellamy drew
attention to the renewed role of civilian experts with social science credentials in Russian/Soviet
defense thinking and properly linked it to the tsarist experience with civilian experts. He focused
on the contributions of Jan Bloch and his six-volume study of future war and compared Bloch's
contributions with those of Andrei A. Kokoshin, then a senior researcher at ISKAN. Kokoshin
soon after (May 1992) became First Deputy Minister of Defense of Russia along with General
Pavel Grachev -- while Yeltsin himself temporarily held the post of minister.23 His nomination
enjoyed the support of Colonel-General Dmitri Volkogonov, Soviet Army (retired), who was
close confidant of President Yeltsin and an advisor on national security issues.24 Yeltsin gave the
post of minister to General Grachev, while Kokoshin remained First Deputy Minister of Defense
to supervise the Russian military-industrial complex in development of advanced weaponry.25
Kokoshin assumed an official position -- something that Bloch never achieved within the tsarist
government.

Bellamy assessed the trends that were transforming land combat on the eve of the
twenty-first century. Writing on the eve of the Gulf War, Christopher Bellamy called attention
to the changes in technology reshaping warfare.

Advanced military forces are dependent on computers, radio and other communications,
and satellites, for reconnaissance, navigation, and communications. Attacking the
enemy's "brain and stomach" need no longer depend on tanks racing round a flank, or
aircraft pounding headquarters and industrial centres from above. The enemy's brain and
nerve system can be seared and paralyzed by jamming, and various types of
electromagnetic weapons. Electronic warfare, and other "soft kill" weapons are likely to
usurp the position envisaged for tanks and aircraft in much of the 1930s military theory.
Low-frequency weapons and application of bio-electronics may severely reduce the
effectiveness and alertness of enemy forces, commanders, and political leaders.26

Bellamy thus linked Kokoshin and the current Revolution in Military Affairs with Bloch's mass
industrial war and the mechanization of war in the 1930s. Kokoshin's ties to these two
revolutions are explicit. Like Bloch, Kokoshin has called for a methodological breakthrough in
the military-political studies and cited the need to apply "a systems approach, systems analysis,
and operations research" and the development of new methods.27 Kokoshin cited the positive
accomplishments of the Hague Conference of 1899 in limiting weapons development in his co-authored work on preventing war.28 However, in these works Kokoshin did not break
with the Leninist interpretation of general war in the early twentieth century contributing to
revolutionary potential for social transformation. What was for Bloch a disaster for states and
societies was a necessary instrument of intensified, international class struggle for Lenin. With
regard to the late twentieth century, however, Kokoshin fully accepted the necessity of
preventing the outbreak of general war between East and West and its escalation into a nuclear
exchange.

Kokoshin's indirect ties to the Bloch of 1898 are, however, not the entire story.
Kokoshin has also spoken of his respect and affinity for Prince Alexander M. Gorchakov,
Russian Foreign Minister from 1856 to 1882. Indeed, Kokoshin identified Bismarck, Talleyrand,
and Gorchakov as his models for statesmanship.29 And there exists a distinct, if more distant, tie
to Bloch through Gorchakov. Prince Gorchakov oversaw Russian foreign relations in a period
following military defeat and at a time of political isolation. He directed a revolution in Russian
diplomacy, abandoning the bankrupt policy of "conservative internationalism" that earned
Nicholas I the title "gendarme of Europe," and adopting a policy of limited engagement so that
Russia could deal with its own internal reforms and order.

Gorchakov wrote in one of his dispatches that Russia was not asleep but only gathering
its forces.30 Under this policy of gathering strength (recuelliement) [sosredotochenie] he
managed to forge a Franco-Russian relationship which in the immediate years after the Crimean
War ended Russia's isolation. And after the January Insurrection of 1863 broke the Franco-Russian relationship, he oversaw a policy that forged ties with Bismarck's Prussia as it unified
Germany. For his support Gorchakov achieved international recognition of Russia's unilateral
renunciation of the Black Sea Clauses, which had in 1856 forced Russia to de-militarize that sea.
Gorchakov managed these changes without fighting a major war.31 Gorchakov's foreign policy
provided the external environment for domestic reform and transformation durng the reign of
Alexander II, the period known as the epoch of the Great Reforms. At the same time it put
Russia in the position of acquiescing to the destruction of the balance of power and the creation
of a German hegemony in Central Europe. When Russia fought another Balkan War in 1877-1878, this new order at the Congress of Berlin effectively reduced what Russiahad gained by
force of arms and marked the beginning of the end of Gorchakov's last system.32

Kokoshin is not alone in his admiration of Gorchakov's foreign policy. Evgeniy
Primakov has also praised Gorchakov's foreign policy in a speech on the occasion of the 200th
anniversary of Gorchakov's birth. Gorchakov followed an active, engaged foreign policy that
avoided adventures and created a climate for Russian internal reforms, including access to
Western capital markets to finance economic development, especially railroad construction.33

In Primakov's reference to Gorchakov there is a second connection with Bloch. This is
not the Bloch of Future War, but the Bloch who was one of Russia's railroad magnates and
advisor to the Ministry of Finance, which sought to exploit foreign investment in private
enterprise to bring about Russian economic modernization.34 Economic transformation had
strengthened Russian power, but it had also made Russia more inter-dependent on European
capital markets and dictated a more reserved foreign policy. Such was the policy advocated by
Gorchakov and supported by Reutern and Bloch during the crisis leading up to the Balkan War
of 1877-1878. Russia had not gathered sufficient strength to overthrow the balance of power
which still protected the Ottoman Empire, "the sick man of Europe." But under public pressure to
protect fellow Slavs from Ottoman oppression, the tsarist government stumbled into war and
disaster.

The Kokoshin-Svechin Connection

Kokoshin did his most important early work on the US national security system and its
methods of forecasting. During the final years of the Cold War he took an active part in the
Soviet efforts to undermine SDI. During perestroyka he became one of the most important voices
for an alternative, political-military posture for the Soviet Union, writing in collaboration with
General-Major V. V. Larionov and General of the Army V. N. Lobov.35 One of the key
arguments advanced by Kokoshin and Larionov during this period was the relevance of
professional military judgment that was outside Party control, especially the writings of A. A.
Svechin, tsarist genshtabist [officer of the General Staff] and Soviet voyenspets [military
specialist]. Kokoshin has continued to point to Svechin's analysis as relevant to contemporary
issues of military reform.36 Kokoshin's interest in Svechin developed during the period when he
was examining the limitations of Soviet strategic thinking on military-technical aspects of
nuclear war and seeking to reintegrate politics into both doctrine and strategy. Svechin's work on
strategy had a deep foundation in the military classics, especially Clausewitz and Delbrueck, and
emphasized the need to integrate political ends and military means. Svechin's identification with
the need to prepare the nation for protracted war and his enumeration of the risks associated with
the cult of the offensive and the myth of ideological superiority greatly enriched imperial and
Soviet military thought and stimulated much debate. Kokoshin, Larionov, and Lobov mounted a
campaign to rehabilitate Svechin and used his views of the viability of the defense in their
struggle to recast Soviet strategy and doctrine during perestroyka.

Kokoshin supported Boris Yeltsin during the August Putsch of 1991 and was actively
involved in seeking a security arrangement during the transition from Union to Commonwealth.
In the Ministry of Defense, where he was the ranking civilian down to 1997, he was involved in
military research and development, procurement, and foreign military sales. Kokoshin went on to
become head of the Russian Defense Council and the State Military Inspectorate and, as
Secretary of the Security Council played a leading role in military reform. He has been most
explicit in pointing to the need to address the military-political and military-economic aspects of
military reform.37 His leadership in attempting to transform the Russian military-industrial
complex and to adapt it to its research and development priorities to the revolution in military
affairs is well documented.38 In this interest Kokoshin had a responsibility very similar to that of
M. N. Tukhachevsky, who in the early 1930s was director of armaments for the Red Army
during another revolution in military affairs, that of mechanization and motorization.

The Kokoshin-Tukhachevsky Connection

Kokoshin's interest in the work of A. A. Svechin provides a link to another capital work
in military foresight, the GRU's major study of future war undertaken in the 1928 -- exactly
thirty years after the publication of Bloch's work. Svechin provided extensive input into this
study. In this case, however, the study was classified and did not become available for analysis
until the late 1980s. This study, which was done by a group of researchers from the 4th
Directorate of the Staff of the RKKA [Main Intelligence Directorate] under Mikhail
Tukhachevsky's direction, was circulated in 1928 in a limited edition to central administrative
organs and to the military districts. Its topic was "Future War," i. e., the forecasting a future
conflict for the USSR. It took into account the general political situation; the human resources
available to the USSR and its probable adversaries; economic factors affecting supply and
logistics, including the economic bases of war potential; technological factors and the influence
of weapons modernization and innovation on the nature of future war; political factors including
an assessment of class, agrarian, and national conflicts within probable opponents; and
operational and organizational problems affecting the conduct of war.39 As Jan Berzin, the
Head of the 4th Directorate, pointed out in his introduction, the task of adapting a state's military
system to the needs of and preparing a state and military for "future war" was common to all
states. Berzin noted the mistakes made by the European powers in their preparations prior to the
World War and identified their basic mistake in underestimating the changed conditions brought
about by the development and hegemony of imperialism. By this Berzin meant those
characteristics associated with total war, the "monstrous material scale of the war, the
unprecedented intensity of the struggle, the colossal shocks in the areas of economic and political
life," exactly those features to which Bloch had pointed.40 The armies and states of Europe,
including their general staffs, were not prepared for the war that they faced. Berzin discussed the
origins of this project and called attention to the fact that in 1926 Tukhachevsky, as Chief of the
RKKA Staff and in response to the 14th Congress of the Communist Party, had ordered a study
of future war in keeping with the Party's directives on the industrialization of the country.41 In
explaining the methodology that he wanted applied to the problem of studying future war,
Tukhachevsky observed:

The most important basis for determining the nature of war is the character of the
condition of productive forces of the opposing sides, the assessment of possible coalitions
etc. From the time of the Civil War many had the impression of future war as our
revolutionary war, that is, lightning warfare, based on revolutionary elan etc. Of course,
only a few suffer from such sins now.42

Tukhachevsky described such sentiments as "revolutionary idealism" that had nothing in
common with Marxism.

This study's primary focus of the threat was the threat posed by Poland and Romania,
along with other successor states along the Soviet Union's Western border. The study addressed
their existing military systems, mobilization potential, and industrial base and examined the
possibilities of external military assistance to these potential adversaries from the leading
imperial powers. It made a very powerful case for the militarization of the Soviet economy to
meet these threats and examined a wide range of operational issues. The final chapter of the
study was a ringing endorsement of the industrialization of the national economy to meet the
needs of the military.43 In the end, Tukhachevsky's study came down on the side of preparing for
a future war on the basis of "total war." In operational terms it looked to improving the ability of
the Red Army to conduct deep battle, i. e., increasing the "far-battle nature [dal'noboinost'] of
contemporary operations."44 The study went on to embrace the concept of logistical constraints
on such operations, noting the limits that rail throughput capacity placed on the support of large-scale offensive operations in terms of the effective distance forces might advance before
exhaustion set in. Motorization might lessen but could not eliminate this problem. Thus,
operational pauses and the regrouping of forces were a necessity. 45

The development of deep battle capabilities went hand-in-hand with the planning for
successive operations. On this issue, Tukhachevsky's study ran into a distinct problem. On the
one hand, the Red Army had to prepare for the conduct of decisive operations in the initial
period of war, while recognizing that the Red Army lacked the means to achieve a rapid and
decisive victory. Civil War operations, including the "Campaign beyond the Vistula," were
irrelevant and could not be compared with those of the World War.

Thus, just as the experience of the World War so also the experience of 1920 shows that:
a) one should not build on horse transport the logistical base of modern troops, even if
very few in number, at a great distance; b) a sufficiently rapid reestablishment of the
railroads behind advancing troops and the structure of their rear remains an unresolved
task for contemporary technology. Therefore, the operational capabilities of
contemporary armies still remain limited.46

The point became one of conducting each operation so that it would be decisive within its own
depth, i. e., bring about the destruction of the opposing enemy forces throughout the depth of
their deployments by means of breakthroughs and encirclements. On this point the study cited no
less an authority than J. F. C. Fuller, Britain's leading proponent of mechanized warfare. The
architect of Plan 1919 and the prime promoter of the mechanization of the British Army, had
written in 1926 of the possibility of using new technology in deep battle:

At present aviation can attack the enemy rear; tanks can break through the front and
attack the rear; armored cars can turn his flank and once again attack his rear, i. e.,
mount attacks against the most sensitive part of the force, in his stomach. The attack of
the rear at the present time is quite possible and in my opinion has become one of the
most important tactical operations in war.47

These partial destructions could not prevent a large and economically-developed state from
redeploying forces to meet the threat and from mobilizing additional resources. However, the
combination of such operations was the most likely road to decisive victory.48 At the same time
the study admitted that the threat of exhaustion and positional warfare could not be precluded. In
that case, the Soviet Union had to prepare for protracted war and mobilize its entire economy and
society.49 This had been a central theme of Svechin's strategy and his call for the general staff to
serve as an "integral commander" to coordinate the state's preparations for and conduct of war.
The key to overcoming the threat of positional warfare, according to Tukhachevsky, was the
mechanization of the armed forces to assist in breakthrough and exploitation. Thus, the Red
Army assumed that it had found an answer to Bloch's pessimism with successive, deep
operations. Modern war and revolution could, in this guise, become complementary instruments
of an industrialized and militarized Soviet state. By the mid 1930s that confidence was shaken
by the emergence of a new threat configuration with the rearmament of Nazi Germany. In 1937
Stalin turned on the Soviet military elite and, in a blood purge, eliminated Tukhachevsky,
Svechin, Berzin and many others who had taken part in the RKKA's 1928 study of future war.

Kokoshin has noted that this gamble led to the increased militarization of the country in
the late 1920s and early 1930s. The development of the national economy in all its sectors was
directed towards support of the armed forces and the methods of economic administration were
militarized, including reliance upon the slave labor of the GULag.50) Tukhachevsky had favored
the emancipation of strategy from politics and had attacked Svechin for upholding Clausewitz'
view of politics defining the objectives to be achieved by the military instrument. In this regard
he became part of the extention of political-ideological repression to the military itself. The
outcome was a militarized totalitarian regime that decapitated its military elite. While the Stalin
regime won a total war at great cost, its combination of terror and the cult of Stalin's military
genius fostered intellectual amnesia among the military elite.51

The Kokoshin-Sokolovsky Connection

Kokoshin is also linked to the third great exercise in the Russian study of future war in
this century, one that began in the late 1950s and addressed the question of military strategy in
the nuclear age. This period began with the emancipation of military strategy from its Stalinist
strait jacket after the dictator's death in 1953 .52 "The Special Collection of Military Thought,"
which was intended for limited circulation among senior officers of the Soviet Armed Forces,
addressed the role of missiles and nuclear weapons in military strategy and came at a time when
Nikita Khrushchev was attempting to reduce Soviet conventional forces.53 As Kokoshin has
pointed out, this work subordinated strategy to politics, while ignoring the feedback between the
two.54

In 1962 an unclassified version of these articles appeared under the nominal editorship of
Marshal M. D. Sokolovsky, the Chief of the General Staff.55 Among the authors engaged in this
project was then Colonel V. V. Larionov of the General Staff. Larionov, who became Andrei
Kokoshin's military mentor at ISKAN, has asserted that the Sokolovsky volume, Military
Strategy, was directly tied to two distinct policy objectives. Khrushchev wanted to reduce
conventional forces and their burden on the national economy and to bluff the United States into
accepting strategic nuclear parity with the USSR, when such a state did not exist. With his claim
that missiles could be turned out "like sausages" Khrushchev used an industrial metaphor that
not only did not fit the nuclear age but stimulated a strategic arms race. Soviet military authors
referred to the advent of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles as a military-technical revolution or
"revolution in military affairs." They defined this revolution as: the entire sum of fundamental
changes in the changes in the means of armed struggle, in the methods of conducting combat
actions, in the organization of troops, their training and education, -- changes, which have
occurred over the last fifteen years in the most industrially and scientifically advanced countries
and are connected first of all with the creation of nuclear-armed missiles.56 Khrushchev's
purpose, according to Kokoshin, had been intimidation of the West: "to scare them to death."57 In
the end the Soviet military-industrial complex was the chief beneficiary of this arms race in the
1960s and 1970s. The cost it imposed upon Soviet society eventually proved fatal.

Under Brezhnev, production of conventional and nuclear weapons went forward at great
cost to the Soviet economy.58 Colonel Vitaly Shlykov, Russian Army (retired), who headed a
research institute on foreign military-economic potential within the Main Intelligence Directorate
[GRU] of the General Staff in the 1980s, has commented that this bias toward industrial war was
what led to an overestimation of Western military-economic potential and large-scale
procurement of both conventional and nuclear weapons.59 Shlykov goes on to describe the
impact of excessive secrecy in assessing external threats and says that the Soviet Union lost the
Cold War, not because of a shortage of weapons, but a shortage of "think tanks"60

The Kokoshin - Ogarkov/Akhromeev Connection

The fourth great exercise in forecasting the nature of future war came in the 1980s. In the
1970s Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov and the General Staff addressed a Revolution in Military
Affairs, which involved rapid technological innovation and the appearance of advanced weapons
based on new physical principles.61 But thinking about military doctrine, especially military-technical issues, remained locked to the idea of fighting and winning a global, thermonuclear
war.62 This came at a time of a renewal of Cold War tensions, which had a profound effect on
short, mid- and long-term assessments of the military-political situation confronting the Soviet
Union. It was precisely under these conditions that the tension between continuity and radical
change [preemstvennost' i revolyutsionnost'] in Soviet military doctrine regarding future war
made its appearance, leading to important developments in the second half of the decade.63

General-Colonel M. A. Gareev, then a Deputy Chief of the General Staff and Chief of
the Military Science Directorate, associated Ogarkov's revolution with a "leap" in military affairs
but gave it a distinct political emphasis.

Now we can speak about a turning point in the development of military science and
military art. In general, a new qualitative leap in the development of military affairs,
connected with the modernization of nuclear weapons and especially the appearance of
new types of conventional weapons, is ripening. In connection with this [process] there
has arisen the need to rethink the basic military-political and operational-strategic
problems of the defense of the socialist Fatherland.64

Gareev's call for a military-political response to this technological revolution represented a sharp
break with the Brezhnev era and was a harbinger of things to come. Yet, because of the nature of
the Soviet system, military forecasters focused on military-technical issues, leaving the military-political issues in the hands of the Politburo. Under Marshal Sergei Akhromeev, who replaced
Ogarkov as Chief of the General Staff in 1984, Soviet military thought began to examine the
possibility of a general war fought with advanced conventional weapons.65 Given the ongoing
war in Afghanistan and the increasing evidence of economic decline and technological stagnation
in the face of a renewed arms race with the United States, hard choices had to be made. These
choices began to be made when Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the CPSU.

The Soviet political leadership during the period of stagnation and the post-Brezhnev
interregnum had been slow to respond to this systemic challenge. Their failure to take timely and
vigorous actions in a society, supposedly dominated by long-range, rational, central planning,
revealed glaring flaws in the edifice of "mature socialism." N. N. Moiseev, former head of the
Academy of Sciences Computing Center and a leader in Soviet military simulation work,
observed that ideological dogmatism, careerism, and bureaucratic inertia precluded a timely and
effective response to this pressing challenge. The command system which had worked during the
Stalin industrialization, the Great Patriotic War, and even the nuclear and space challenges,
would not meet this new challenge.66 Foreign Minister Eduard Shevarnadze showed that the
same situation applied at a meeting of foreign policy experts in July 1988:

Any carelessness in the military sphere, which in the past was devoid of democratic
control, can in the context of acute mistrust and universal suspicion, cost the country a
great deal and have the most severe economic side effects. . . . Many losses of this kind
could have been averted if interpretation of national security interests had not become the
exclusive province of several departments, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs included,
which, moreover, were shielded from criticism, as was the case in the past.67

That challenge was manifest in a number of local wars [Falklands and Lebanon] and
assumed critical mass with the American military build-up of the 1980s and President Reagan's
proclamation of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Kokoshin assumed a prominent role in the
Soviet political campaign to discredit the initiative as a threat to strategic stability. Speaking of
the role of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, Shlykov says that the program was
misunderstood. Actually, it was a major driver for all sorts of advanced weapons programs that
became part of the Revolution in Military Affairs. But bureaucratic inertia, the tankist [armor]
bias of the senior leadership of the General Staff, and the interests of the military-industrial
complex frustrated a timely response to the U. S. research and development initiatives. Shlykov
asserts that Andrei Kokoshin was the figure responsible for mistakenly calling SDI a "bluff"
[blef].68

General-Major Larionov, who worked closely with Kokoshin during this period,
disagrees with Shlykov regarding President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative and
Kokoshin's analysis of it. The program was not a bluff but a case of misdirection and
maskirovka [deception].69 Kokoshin had been among those Soviet scientists who had pointed to
the complexity of the task involved in creating a space-based, laser defense system and had
pointed to a key US technical problem confronting the effort, including insufficient heavy lift to
deploy and sustain the system.70 Thus, the program of strategic defense was itself unrealistic in
terms of its proclaimed goal of defense against a coordinated, first-strike but masked a program
of technological innovations that would create new, advanced conventional weapons of high
accuracy, weapons based on new physical principles and systems for automated command and
control that would mark another revolution in military affairs or, as some Russian observers have
called it, "sixth generation warfare." The practical harbinger of this revolution was the US-led
coalition's campaign during "Desert Storm." This is a revolution based on microelectronics,
automated systems of troop and weapons control, advanced sensors, and radio-electronic
combat.71 In another context General Larionov described this revolution as the
"intellectualization of warfare," i.e., the foundation for the development of information warfare.
Larionov has argued that at present Russia must continue to rely upon its nuclear arsenal for
deterrence as the poor man's alternative because it cannot afford to compete in the Revolution in
Military Affairs, with its high-priced, advanced conventional systems. In the late 1980s
Kokoshin and Larionov supported a series of measures leading to military disengagement in
Central Europe and the reduction of East-West tensions. These moves were supposed to provide
the Soviet Union with the opportunity for internal reform. Instead, the Soviet state collapsed, and
Russia assumed the burden of demilitarization of state and society, while seeking to carry out
military reform to fit a democratic polity and an open society. Kokoshin has been intimately
involved in that protracted and frustrating process for much of this decade.

Thus, Russia's pedigree for studying future war is lengthy and substantial and Kokoshin's
ties impressive. They are not mere curiosities, however much an ahistorical world may find them
irrelevant. Forecasting future war, which is by its very nature a matter of strategy, demands a
sound grounding in history. As Kokoshin and Larionov pointed out in an essay devoted to the
intellectual rehabilitation of Svechin, the military specialist had made precisely that point. "If we
do not furnish our thoughts with a number of military-historical facts, we will be subject to the
danger of getting lost in the abstract tenets of the theory of strategic art." Moreover, Svechin
recommends such a grounding in history for both soldiers and civilians. "Isolation from an
historical basis is dangerous for both the strategist and the politician."72 At the same time,
Kokoshin understands that history is only a tool and that the current challenge is unique,
multidimensional, and difficult. Andrei Kokoshin is in a unique position to analyze these past
efforts at the study of future war and to apply them to the current debate over the military-political aspects of future war. Kokoshin fully supports Svechin's view that in the study of
future war the relationship between war and politics should be a preeminent consideration.73

The remainder of this paper addresses the competing visions of future war articulated by
contemporary soldiers and civilians. They have addressed both military-technical and military-political aspects of future war and reflect the considerable diversity within the Russian polity on
these issues. The definition of future war has considerable impact on the course, direction, and
content of military reform and national security policy. As Kokoshin has demonstrated in his
own work, they are precisely the point where politics and strategy must meet. Their ties to
Kokoshin are instructive.

Alternative Forecasts of Future War

In a recent essay on the continued utility of a "unified military doctrine" as the best
rudder for guiding successful military reform, Kokoshin made a powerful case for confining
professional soldiers to the military-technical aspects of future war and leaving the military-political aspects of future war to the politicians and statesmen. Kokoshin went on to identify a
collection of living and dead generals and one living soldier-civilian [Professor V. M. Kulish, a
retired colonel, who had served in the General Staff and became a leading military historian ]
who had made important contributions to the development of his own ideas on the topic. General
Staff officers figured prominently in that list. Among the deceased, he mentioned Marshals
Ogarkov and Akhromeev, two chiefs of the Soviet General Staff. Among the living he cited
Marshals V. G. Kulikov and General of the Army V. N. Lobov, both former Chiefs of the
General Staff. Prominent among the others listed were General-Major Larionov and General of
the Army M. A. Gareev.74 General Gareev, now retired from the Russian Army and President of
the Russian Academy of Military Sciences, has written extensively on the problem of future war
in the post-Cold War era. He reciprocates Kokoshin's admiration.

The Kokoshin-Gareev Connection

Gareev posits military foresight expressly in a political context and emphasizes the
impact of domestic and international poliitcs, on the practice and outcome of the processes
affecting military art. Gareev's is the messy politics where socio-political, economic, and
ideological interests collide. Military strategy cannot be isolated from the political process as
some sort of final product, in which the military confines its concerns to narrow, military-strategic policies. "And for contemporary conditions it is evident that priority in the resolution of
political questions lies with statesmen and of military-strategic questions with the military
leadership." But, in reality, close cooperation among politicians, economists, and soldiers has
been in short supply. "Isolated work, attempts to limit too sharply the functions and spheres of
activity, the excessive self-confidence and ambition of politicians, the thoughtlessness and blind
obedience of military leaders lead to tragic mistakes like those that occurred in 1941,
Afghanistan and Chechnya."75 His recent review of Andrei Kokoshin's Army and Politics:
Military-Political and Military-Strategic Thought, 1918-1991 underscores the continuing
centrality of international affairs in strategic foresight. Gareev writes on the current international
situation:

The majority of leading states, undertaking specific measures toward lessening the global
confrontation, arms reduction, and the support of partnership relations with the former
socialist countries, continue to act out of their own national interests, strengthening only
their own military security. The very same is being done to the degree of their capabilities
by the former republics of the USSR. It appears that world community is still not ready
for the realization in practice of the policy of "new thinking." One must conclude from
this that the previous sources and causes of wars have not disappeared and that between
various states new contradictions are created.76

Gareev recognizes an important psychological dimension of Russia's time of troubles: the
need to recover a sense of national identity and purpose. From the messianic internationalism of
the Soviet period, the Russian people have gone through a period of national rapture in the late
1980s and early 1990s to one of profound self-doubt. The nation's psychological recovery will
depend on the development of a healthy national egotism that strives to show Russia's place in
the developed world while building on national traditions and maintaining a true sovereignty.77

With regard to military developments, Gareev agrees with Kokoshin on the need for reform,
which he sees as building on those features of the military system inherited from the Soviet
Union but in keeping with Russia's new conditions and defense tasks.78 This psychological
dimension to military reform deserves close examination when addressing the hard questions of
national industrial policy, mobilization base, and information warfare.

Gareev, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, defines military forecasting a "labor of
Sisyphus," a task that by its very nature is always incomplete, dominated by uncertainties, but
necessary for the development of strategy and military art.79 He sees very little prospect for
nuclear war or even general war. The likely conflicts of the next few decades will be local in
character and will arise out of the increased instability of the post-Cold War world and an
intensified competition for economic advantage. The gravest risk will be that such local conflicts
will escalate into larger conflicts. War will continue to a continuation of politics by other means,
and politics will have the difficult task of preventing war and in the case of conflict, controlling
war so that a symmetry between means and ends exists. Therefore, the task of military reform is
to devise a military that will be able to engage in unilateral and multilateral stabilization
operations. Gareev is well aware of the dynamics driving the Revolution of Military Affairs, but
he warns against the danger of isolating such military-technical developments from their
political-economic context and the real demands of military art. Mass armies, based on quantity
of weapons, will give way to small, professional forces which will seek to leverage qualitative
advantages to achieve victory with minimal losses.

With regard to the Revolution in Military Affairs, Gareev identifies five basic directions:
information processes as applied to reconnaissance, communications, radio-electronic combat,
and automatized systems of control of troops and weapons; the perfection of high-accuracy
weapons with primary focus on their offensive strike potential as the most effective and
economical path for development; the development of the triad of offensive means with order of
importance going to the most mobile components, SSBNs, and long-range aviation equipped
with long-range cruise missiles; greater efforts to increase the survivability of weapons
complexes and personnel by concealment and protection from enemy attack by fire and radio-electronic destruction; and more intense development of techniques for combat training,
especially the use of fire and equipment simulators, in keeping with the high costs of the
exploitation and use of weapons and complex equipment.80 Gareev returns to the theme of
information processing as the means by which combat power can be focused not on the
destruction of individual pieces of equipment but on "the disruption of their unified information
space, sources of intelligence, channels of navigation, aiming, and systems of communication of
control as a whole."81

Gareev's discussion of weapons development that follows provides an almanac of new
types of weapons and equipment, much of it based on new physical principles. The origins of
these new weapons are to be found in the shift from industrial to information societies:

A qualitative "technological explosion," widespread computerization and the creation of
artificial intellect, the farthest development of microelectronics, of "thinking," intelligent
weapons, the introduction into the process of control of automatized systems and robotics
can to a significant degree change the material base of armed struggle.82

These innovations will bring increased capabilities for deep battle. They included
enhanced range and accuracy of missiles and increased speed, range, and altitude for combat
and transport aviation. Having already noted the development of third generation nuclear
weapons where radiation replaces blast as the primary agent of destruction, Gareev also
emphasizes the increased capabilities of cruise missiles in terms of range, accuracy, and
difficulty of intercept. He also notes the impact of the changing tempo of battle, which will
make possible rapid action in the employment of combat systems in training and in the conduct
of combat. Acceleration of the process of troop control between the various combat arms and
systems is a top priority.83

Gareev provides a long list of new weapons that are under development. They include
non-lethal means that incapacitate equipment and paralyze personnel. Psycho-tronic weapons,
which he describes as a new type of weapon of mass destruction that works on the psychology of
people for extended periods of time -- possibly months and years. Advanced research in genetic
engineering and molecular biology has made possible genetic weapons that use man-made toxins
to affect the genetic apparatus of living organisms Electromagnetic and infra-sound can attack
the human organism, such as low-frequency vibrations which bring on epileptic seizures.
"Geophysical weapons" may be developed to cause earthquakes, tidal waves, destruction of the
ozone, and cloudbursts in specific regions of the world. Gareev argues that the first generation
of such weapons was employed by the US in Vietnam and that later models have the potential for
greater effect.84

He devotes special attention to expanded capabilities in "information warfare," which
include new means and methods of mass communications and electronics to destroy a state from
within. This is a synthesis of early twentieth-century yellow journalism with the controlled media
of totalitarian states to undermine the faith and confidence of the opposing population while
mobilizing one's own and protecting it from enemy efforts to manipulate that opinion. Gareev
cites his colleague General Belous, in a confused reference to the tale of Hearst and the War with
Spain, but his attention to control and emphasis on an information struggle that is already
underway is particularly relevant. He foresees "a shift from the direct confrontation of armies to
the methods of covert, undeclared warfare."85 He identifies this with B. H. Liddell-Hart's
"indirect approach" to strategy and sees it as an integral part of future armed conflicts.

Gareev links information warfare in local conflicts to the use of non-lethal systems
capable of incapacitating combat formations but not affecting the civilian population. These
include "lasers, microwaves, light and electromagnetic impulse, microorganisms, chemicals,
computer viruses and other means." He also notes that the US and several other countries are
working on "exotic technologies" with the potential for weaponization. These include powerful
lasers to disorient pilots and take out navigation and control systems. "Lasers can be turned into
generators of much less powerful impulses, which will not kill but only knock out living
targets." He mentions the use of microwaves and non-nuclear electromagnetic impulse to disrupt
the operations of radio stations, computers, and electronic systems.86 While he offers no more
than a mere listing of such weapons and their effects, the impression left is of a wide range of
applications of new technology to warfare in all its aspects.

Gareev follows this introduction with a treatment of conventional armament
developments as they will affect individual services over the next 20-25 years. What is
interesting here is that he would leave the existing structure of Russia's services intact, i. e.,
treats air defense as a distinct area and emphasizes the need to strengthen its target acquisition
and tracking capabilities against stealth aircraft and ballistic missiles. In this regard he stands in
opposition to the current military reform program which placed strategic defense forces, space
forces, and strategic reconnaissance/early-warning system with the Strategic Rocket Forces to
form the Strategic Nuclear Forces. At the same time the planes of the Air Defense Forces have
been merged with the Air Forces. In the case of aircraft and air defense developments Gareev
devotes considerable attention to dirigibles as a platform for radar warning stations to replace the
ground stations lost with the breakup of the Soviet Union.87 As might be expected from an
officer with extensive experience with ground forces, Gareev devotes considerable attention to
those innovations which will affect land warfare. Here, he sees a continuation of past trends and
emphasizes changes in artillery -- tube and missile -- which will not only bring about greater
range but also affect fire norms and require a shift from a model based on probability-based kills
to high-precision strikes by anti-personnel and anti-tank munitions and mines. Counter-battery
fire has entered a new era in terms of effective destruction of opposing artillery systems. He
discusses improvements in anti-tank system and calls attention to the role of ATACMS in the
Gulf War.88 Also on the basis of Gulf War experience, Gareev discusses the need to improve IFF
systems for ground combat to reduce fratricide and notes the importance of the space-based
global positioning system to provide exact positions of friendly and opposing forces and to
enhance precision strike capabilities.89

Gareev concludes his discussion of new technologies and their impact on combat by
addressing the impact of nuclear and conventional arms reductions on the nature of armed
conflict during a period of qualitative improvements in their capabilities. The discussion of
nuclear forces abandons the concept of parity and talks in terms of sufficiency, defined as
sufficient means to execute a retaliatory strike to inflict significant losses on the opposing side.90
Radical reductions in nuclear forces associated with START I & II and the simultaneous
modernization of conventional forces lead Gareev to consider the need, in the absence of any
arms control or reduction agreements covering such systems, to call for the creation of strategic
non-nuclear forces. These would have the capability of threatening the most important strategic
targets of the opposing side. The development of operational-strategic and scientific-technical
concepts for such forces would be complex, and Gareev speculates that the first-strike force
would include long-range, air, surface, and sea-launched cruise missiles. Such a course, he
asserts, would open a new direction for an arms race.91

Gareev views represent an important manifestation of Russian military thinking on the
contours of future armed conflict and the impact of the RMA on such conflicts. His views are
those of a soldier/scholar of great experience and insight. Only recently Gareev gave his own
perspective on the current situation in the Russian military and the prospects for future
developments. In those remarks Gareev made six points. 1) the utility of studying military
history, especially the need to overcome the gap that has developed between military theorists
and military historians, 2) the indispensability of the army and other defense structures to the
state for the protection and promotion of its interests, 3) popular support of the armed forces as
the main basis of the state's military power, 4) economic power as the foundation of the nation's
defense capabilities, independence, and sovereignty, 5) the correlation of politics and military
strategy -- political ends and military means as the core of national security, and 6) creative
development of military art to address the profound changes affecting future armed struggle.92
At the same time the current international situation and Russia's domestic environment --
economic situation, social stability and political order -- define the military-political context for
forecasting future wars and conflicts. In this regard non-military and quasi-military thinkers are
playing a capital role in defining future military requirements. One of the central themes of their
works is the issue of threat, its source, character, and degree of imminence. Kokoshin has a
range of ties to these figures as well. Some of these are the result of professional ties as an
analyst. Others are the result of his career in government. And some are a direct result of policy
conflicts and deep disagreements.

The Kokoshin-Arbatov Connection

Andrei Kokoshin's ties to Aleksei Arbatov belong to the first category and are extensive
and long. Aleksei's father, Georgiy Arbatov, was the longtime director of ISKAN and served as
Kokoshin's political mentor.93 In 1984 Arbatov senior appointed Kokoshin to the post of Deputy
Director. Kokoshin and the young Arbatov are of the same generation of young civilian analysts
who in the 1980s became important figures in the debate on Soviet security policy. As a civilian
analyst on defense and security issues with the Institute of World Economy and International
Affairs [IMEMO], Arbatov earned a reputation as an important voice for transparency in military
affairs and for military reform during perestroyka.94 Kokoshin cites his work and that of Sergei
Blagovolin for their contribution to raising the issue of burden of defense on the national
economy in their advocacy of "reasonable sufficient defense.95 Indeed, Arbatov warned that
seeking to maintian parity with the United States in another round of the arms race would play
into the hands of the United States as it pursued the economic collapse of the USSR through
"competition[sic] strategy." The appropriate response to such strategic provocations was
"reasonable sufficiency."96 Aleksei Arbatov edited two volumes on arms control and security
issues and authored a book on Soviet views on nuclear weapons.97 He became one of the leading
Russian commentators on the Conventional Forces in Europe negotiations.98 Like Kokoshin and
many other civilian analysts of that era, he got a reputation among hard liners as an enemy of the
military. It is thus ironic that in their present role each has a leading role in military reform.
After the fall of the Soviet Union both Kokoshin and the young Arbatov were drawn into
politics. Kokoshin joined the Yeltsin government, and Arbatov became a member of the
Yabloko faction -- a liberal opposition party -- and was elected to the State Duma in December
1995. There he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Duma's Defense Committee. He has
authored some of the most thoughtful and systematic opinions on the role of the Russian military
and its reform.

In the midst of conflict over military reform between Baturin, then head of the Defense
Council, and Minister of Defense Rodionov in the spring of 1997, Arbatov identified the core
issue, the condition of state finances and need to ensure that funding the military did not
bankrupt other government programs. In January 1997 he had described the situation as "havoc"
and stated:

The Defense Ministry's demand to allocate 163,000 billion roubles exceeds its official
quota by 60 percent. This implies that the state must completely stop the financing of
health care, education, science, culture, and government investment programs designed to
revitalize the Russian economy and to channel the released funds to maintain the army in
its present state.99

At the same time he also recognized that downsizing the military, which he supported, was not a
matter of simply cutting troop strength but required additional funding. Without that, the
Ministry would have to take funds for other vital purposes: "it is difficult to apportion from the
1997 defense budget [R104 trillion] the funds necessary to cut the armed forces, as long as such
financing will be detrimental to the army's current needs, i.e. personnel upkeep, arms purchases,
and development of military science and technologies."100 In short, Arbatov agreed with
Baturin's goal but accepted Rodionov's assertion that downsizing would cost money. The
dilemma was that the 1997 defense budget had earmarked only R3.7 trillion for force reductions,
sufficient funding for a 50,000 man reduction.

As to downsizing, Arbatov asserted that Russia's nuclear arsenal was a sufficient
guarantee against aggression to permit a significant force reduction from 1.5 million men to one
million, approximately a 40% reduction in uniformed personnel, over the next two years.
Arbatov wanted to place the funds for such a reduction in the accounts of other ministries
involved with funding social protection of the population or overseeing special military units not
under the direct control of the Ministry of Defense so as to improve legislative oversight.
Furthermore, he stated his willingness to see an increase in expenditures [R15 trillion] to fund
the costs of troop reductions.101) Moreover, Arbatov took into account the fact that many of
Russia's military personnel and civilians were not under the Ministry of Defense and had to be
cut as well.

In a presentation to a conference on the Russian military at the U. S. Army War College
Arbatov outlined his own vision of the Russian military in 2010, or the end of the current reform
process. Arbatov began with a description of the international environment in which the Russian
Federation operates. He emphasized the radical changes brought on by the end of the Cold War
and the break up of the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War did not leave Russia in a stable
security environment, but one marked by regional instabilities, especially in the south, i.e.,
Caucasus and Central Asia. Moreover, within Russia where disputes over "national values,
ideology, and security perceptions" have created deep disputes among competing political
groups.102 Underpinning those disputes is the reality of Russia's own internal crisis of which he
saw no end in sight.

An unprecedented decline in production, a financial crisis, the growth of foreign debt and
the heavy loss of gold reserves have made Russia depend on the Big Seven financial
powers, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.103

At the same time Russia retains the attributes of a great power in terms of size, population,
natural resources, industrial base, and military power. He argues that Russia's current force
levels are too high and repeated his call for substantial troop reductions, arguing that even with
significant reductions in its nuclear arsenal over the next decade Russia would retain sufficient
deterrence capability. Arbatov based his call for force reductions on his reading of the
international situation, in which he argued that the emerging international order would be
multipolar, in which the key actors would be "the United States, Western Europe, China, Japan,
and a number of strong sub-regional states and associations of states." If Russia manages to halt
its own decline and finds an appropriate place in the international system, then it will retain its
great power status. In an assessment of military capabilities and intentions of the states around
Russia Arbatov concluded that various possible threats could be managed if Russia adopted
appropriate means to achievable ends. But it was precisely here that Arbatov identified the key
problems associated with military reform, what he called the "current paradoxes in Russian
defense posture."104

The first paradox Arbatov noted was the "great relaxation of civilian control of the
military." The absence of effective civilian control has left the military with the task of defining
its own position in a state and society undergoing profound change. He warned that such
autonomy was especially dangerous during Russia's transition to a market economy and a
democratic political system. Bureaucratic inertia and institutional self-defense under such
conditions have meant that the armed forces had avoided any meaningful restructuring, retained
their cold-war force posture and missions, even as they went down in size. The Yeltsin's
government's "shallow declarations" about Russia having no enemies have provided insufficient
guidance to a military that must prepare for war. In the absence of effective guidance, the
Ministry of Defense has continued to prepare for all contingencies from a war with NATO to
countering Muslim fundamentalist guerrillas. Arbatov concludes that this situation has led to
strategic over extension: "The inability of the top political and military leaders to make difficult
choices from a number of competing priorities has led to spreading limited resources much too
thinly, and thereby undermining our overall defense capabilities."105 The ultimate responsibility
for such decisions lay with the Yeltsin government. Just a week before last spring's shake-up in
the government Yeltsin gave to Chernomyrdin and Kokoshin the implicit task of establishing
such control as a necessary condition for reform. Yeltsin handed that task to Prime Minister
Kiriyenko and Kokoshin, but the subsequent financial crisis and economic collapse undercut
fiscal support. The new interregnum and deepening economic collapse that followed
Kiriyenko's removal and the Duma's refusal to confirm Viktor Chernomyrdin as Prime Minister
has made any progress on military reform nearly impossible.

The area where bureaucratic inertia has had its most telling impact has been the continued
investment in two large-scale, worst-case military contingencies. The first involves a general
war with the United States and its NATO allies. The second involves a scenario of war with the
United States and Japan. Arbatov noted Russia's reduced conventional capabilities, its weakened
strategic position, reduced mobilization capabilities, technological inferiority, and the likelihood
of NATO's expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. Under such conditions a general conflict
in either theater Russia would be forced to rely upon its nuclear arsenal, an unappealing prospect.
"Chillingly, in the case of revived hostilities, only nuclear weapons can be relied upon to negate
this gaping imbalance."106 Moreover, Russia cannot afford the luxury of preparing for such a
worst-case scenario because it would bankrupt the state and still not provide "even minimal
sufficient defense capabilities. Arbatov goes on to suggest that no conceivable contingencies in
the near abroad would justify the current levels of conventional forces. China might become
such a threat to the Russian Far East and Central Asia in the future, but Russia's current policy of
rapprochement and arms sales could reduce that risk if joined with military reform and a
successful joint security policy with the states of Central Asia and favorable development of
Russian-Japanese relations. 107

The unknown in the above equation of successful threat management is the issue of
Russian military reform. Arbatov argues that the failure of reform would lead to a continuation
of the armed forces living off the military capital accrued by the Soviet Union, which is close to
exhaustion. That course will lead to an obsolete military. "Russia is drifting toward a kind of
armed forces China had in the early 1970s, a mass, technologically inferior army, lacking a
robust military-industrial complex and supported by a few hundred obsolete nuclear weapons
with an inadequate C3I system. Arbatov concludes:

Russia's armed forces would not be capable of defending the nation from external threats.
They may, indeed, become a major threat to Russia's own internal security and stability.
And this is a very frightening possibility.108

Turning to the question of Russia's future force posture Arbatov calls for both steady cuts
to a force of 800,000-900,000 by 2001, composed of professionals and a radical restructuring to
fit projected contingencies arising from an evolving international security environment. Russia's
own economic situation should determine the level of defense spending. Writing about the
European security environment before Paris and Madrid, Arbatov proposed modest military
response to NATO enlargement if it did not take into account Russia's security concerns.109
Arbatov does not, however, see a discernable threat of attack upon Russia from the United States,
its European Allies and Japan over the next 10-15 years.110 Arbatov supports the reductions in
nuclear forces for which the START I &II treaties provide, calls for the maintenance of the 1972
ABM Treaty, and even favors the negotiation of a START III Treaty with a reduction of strategic
nuclear arsenals to 1,500-2,000 warheads, provided the West does not embark upon the
deployment of "a wide-scale ground-space ABM defense."111 Russian tactical nuclear weapons
figure prominently in any war-fighting scenario involving strategic precision strikes by advanced
conventional munitions or chemical weapons. Nowhere does Arbatov call for a shift from
mutually-assured destruction to mutually-assured protection as some Russian specialists have.
However, with the announcement of the signing of the US-Russian agreement to extend the
compliance deadline on warhead reductions in the START II Treaty from 2003 to 2007 and the
acceptance of a modification of the ABM Treaty to permit theater ABM defense systems,
Grigoriy Yavlinsky responded favorably, suggesting some modification in Yabloko's position.112

This "window of security" should guide Russian military reform with regard to its
conventional forces. Over the near term Russia conventional forces can limit their preparations
for local conflicts on the southern axis of instability, over the midterm, which he describes as the
next 10-15 years, those forces should be prepared to deal with larger regional conflicts in the
south, and in the long-term, or 15-20 years, those forces should prepare for "regional or large-scale conflicts in the south and/or east."113 During this "window of security" Russia should use
the opportunity to carry out "economic reform, military reform, optimal conversion, limiting
itself in the intermediate period to a minimal reserve of general-purpose armed forces and
powerful cover in the form of nuclear deterrence and modern frontal aviation capable of
providing air superiority over a secondary enemy and a victory even with ground forces that are
inferior in numbers."114

Russian conventional forces would be reduced in numbers and deployed to meet the new
threat environment. Strategic mobile forces would be deployed in the Moscow, Ural, and Volga
military districts and consist of only 1-2 heavy divisions and 2-3 light divisions and be
augmented by enhanced airlift and close support aviation.115 These mobile forces would be
sufficient to conduct two small-scale, local military operations and would provide the troops for
any multilateral, UN-sponsored, peacekeeping/peace-enforcement operations. Forward
deployed forces in the south and east would be kept to a minimum with the pre-positioning of
supplies and the development of the infrastructure to support the deployment of this strategic
reserve. In the Far East, from the Trans-Baikal region to the Maritime Provinces he envisioned a
deployment of 5-7 divisions, which would be under the ceiling being negotiated between
Moscow and Beijing for the 100km-deep border belt in that region. Arbatov noted only one
explicit deployment of Russian forces outside of Russia itself, at least one division in Central
Asia. On the other hand, he called for using "the European portion of the former Soviet Union,
including Russia," to station reserves and store supplies. Such a move would be in keeping with
the low risk of war on that strategic direction. Furthermore, he called for the deployment of 4-5
divisions in the North Caucasus and Trans-Caucasus. In this case, the size of deployments
reflects Arbatov's assessment of the instability in the region.116

Tackling the hardest issue of any military reform in Russia, Arbatov advocated funding
the retirement of large numbers of middle and senior officers and the payment of their
entitlements. Such a course of action involved the retirement of the excess of senior and mid-grade officers now within the Russian armed forces in order to create an optimal relationship
among senior officers, junior officers, NCOs, and enlisted men. Arbatov proposed the
maintenance of undermanned cadre units, while the new fully-complemented units were created.
When the personnel reductions have been completed, Arbatov recommends shifting funds to
such pressing needs as increased pay, better housing and other benefits in order to retain a
professional force. Finally, the reduced personnel costs would permit a shift in funding to troop
maintenance, training, weapons' procurement, and research and development. He warned that
such a program could succeed only if there was "a determined and strong civilian leadership,
willing to meet all the challenges such a program entailed and see it through to its completion.117

Arbatov's future military at the end of this reform program would be small, professional,
high-tech and distinctly Russia. It would include a modern air force and air defense assets of
approximately 1,000-1,500 combat aircraft and transports. The ground forces would include 15-17 heavy divisions and 2-3 light divisions, capable of performing a combat mission like "Desert
Storm." Its mobilization base would come from other armed forces, such as the Border Guards
and would amount to a mobilization capacity to double the size of the active force, a far cry from
the mass, industrial armies of the Soviet period. The Navy would have defensive missions with
the North Fleet charged with protecting Russia's SSBNs. The Pacific Fleet would retain its role
in protecting sea lines of communications and with the Black Sea conduct any international relief
operations authorized by the United Nations. The Black Sea Fleet would be sharply reduced in
size, and the Baltic Fleet disbanded and turn into a flotilla for shore patrol. All told the Navy
would have 70-80 large combat ships, 40-50 attack submarines, and 200-300 shore-based naval
aircraft. Arbatov makes no mention of carrier aviation. Russia's Strategic Forces would include
all land, sea, and air components, along with the early-warning and space forces. These forces
would shift to counter-value targeting and get a major investment in their command and control
assets to increase reliability and survivability. Finally, Arbatov would radically reduce Russia's
"existing military-industrial mobilization assets," which he labels as "dead capital." Their assets
should be privatized. The new army will fight with what it has on hand, which should be
sufficient for most local or regional conflict scenarios. In the unlikely prospect of a more general
conflict, those industries would be vulnerable to attack, making a build-up after war commences
problematic. The only mobilization assets he would retain are those to provide ammunition, fuel
and spare parts as well as the infrastructure necessary to support repair and maintenance.118

While Arbatov believes that only strong civilian leadership can bring such a program to
fruition, he firmly supports his party's concern over the misuse of the armed forces. Their
mission is to meet external military threats to Russia's territorial integrity, sovereignty, and
economic and political interests. They should not be used under any circumstances "either for
resolving political conflicts among various political groupings within the country and the
branches of authority or for punitive and other actions of force within the country." Nor should
they be used to "restore the USSR or the Russian Empire," a position that puts Arbatov and his
party at odds with other opposition parties, who make up a majority in the State Duma.119
Arbatov sees other instruments of national power playing prominent roles in dealing with the
four foreign/security challenges before Russia in Europe, Asia Minor and South Asia and the Far
East. At the same time Arbastov sees even a weakened Russia retaining global obligations
connected to its nuclear arsenal, international position, and geopolitical position.120 Kokoshin and
Arbatov agree substantially on the course and direction of military reform and share a common
vision of the threat environment in which Russia finds itself. There are forces within the Yeltsin
administration who radically disagree with this assessment.

The Kokoshin-Kulikov Connection

Andrei Kokoshin and General Anatoliy Sergeevich Kulikov were, until the recent shake-up of the government, both members of the Yeltsin team. Both have played a prominent role in
the debate over military reform and reform of the armed forces. They became locked in a
political struggle that would determine the chances for success of the government's proposals on
military reform. For the last year, while public attention focused on the struggle between the
Chernomyrdin's "old bears" and the Chubais-Nemtsov "young wolves" within the Yeltsin
administration, another faction with its own base of support and distinct view of Russia's
security has been engaged in an intense fight to retain its power and influence. This is the party
of internal order, the leading figure of which was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Internal
Affairs Kulikov.

A graduate of the Military Academy of General Staff, Kulikov also received his doctorate
of sciences in military economics. Throughout his military career General Kulikov served in the
Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In late 1992 General Kulikov was appointed
commander of the Internal Troops. It was his forces that defended Ostankino on the night of
October 3-4 and took part in the storming of the White House. While Minister of Defense
Grachev wavered, Kulikov and other members of the Party of Internal Order remained steadfast.
Kulikov served as Commander of Russian forces in the Chechen Conflict from February to May
1995. In 1995 he was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs after the disaster at Budennovsk
discredited his boss, Minister Erin, and in early 1997 Yeltsin appointed him Deputy Prime
Minister. It was Kulikov who most vocally opposed General Aleksandr Lebed's negotiation of a
cease fire in Chechnya in August 1996 and took the leading role accusing Lebed of organizing a
legion to seize power at the time of Lebed's removal from the post of Secretary of the Security
Council in early October 1996.121

In early 1997 President Boris Yeltsin, while still recovering from his bout with double
pneumonia and open-heart surgery, announced the appointment of General of the Army Kulikov,
the Russian Minister of Internal Affairs, to the post of Deputy Prime Minister and charged him
with the task of directing the overall struggle against crime and corruption. This new position
placed under his control the police of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, that Ministry's Internal
Troops, the Tax Police, the Custom Service, and the economic police. General Kulikov is a
professional soldier of a different mold, having spent his career dealing with the threat of internal
unrest in the Soviet Union and then the Russian Federation. His prominence reflects the great
emphasis which the Russian government has placed on internal unrest as a threat to the state over
the last several years. This, in turn, translated into a significant investment in forces to maintain
internal order at the expense of the Armed Forces of the Ministry of Defense which have endured
persistent crisis and quantitative and qualitative decline. In a government, based on the rule of
men and not law, such a situation raised serious questions regarding the state of civil-military
relations, particularly in the absence of institutional checks and balances to check the arbitrary
use of power. At the same time, the task of dealing with local instability on the Russian
periphery, especially in the Caucasus, remains real and immediate.

For the last several years, military analysts in Russia and the West have been pointing to the
particular risks associated with one of the dominant features of Boris Yeltsin's personal management
of the defense and security policy. While one of the anticipated results of Russia's transformation
was the demilitarization of state and society, in fact, a very different trend can be discerned: the
appearance of more and more military and paramilitary formations belonging to various agencies
outside the Ministry of Defense, which give Russia multiple militaries and a state system of control
over these forces that could be characterized as military pluralism. Some have justified this growth
on the basis of rising criminality and ethnic unrest within Russia. But the impact has been, as one
author pointed out in early 1997, the degradation of the Armed Forces and the absorption of
resources by the expanding paramilitaries of the other power ministries.

And although the Armed Forces have been cut to the planned figure of 1.5 million men, the
promised prosperity has not arrived, nor is there any sign of savings for the people's social
needs. Where have the resources gone? I have a suggestion: They have been directed at the
"other forces" (the Federal Government Communications and Information Agency, the
Ministry for Affairs of Civil Defense, Emergency Situations, and Elimination of Natural
Disasters, the Interior Ministry, the Federal Border Service . . . ), where reform really is
under way, but reform that is the direct opposite of the changes in the Army and Navy,
whereby their numbers are growing.122

The issue of civilian control over these expanding militaries is one of the most important issues for
the sustainment of Russian democracy and sovereignty.

Unlike the Soviet Union which had an effective system of state and party controls over a
unified military establishment throughout most of its history, Yeltsin's Russia inherited from
Gorbachev's Perestroyka a system of military control in crisis and has managed to make that
situation worse by creating and expanding multiple militaries.123 In the fall of 1991, following the
August Putsch Yeltsin moved to place the organs of the KGB, Ministry of Internal Affairs and
Ministry of Defense operating in Russia directly under presidential control. In response to the Putsch
Yeltsin and his supporters set about breaking up the unified KGB and making their various
directorates into separate agencies. In this matter the First Main Directorate became the Foreign
Intelligence Service. The Border Troops of the KGB came under the Federal Border Service. Only
recently were the Border Troops placed back under the control of the Federal Security Service. The
Main Protection Directorate came out of the KGB's 9th Directorate, to which the well-know "Alpha"
antiterrorism unit was subsequently subordinated. The KGB's 8th Directorate became the
Government Communications Directorate, eventually becoming the Federal Government
Communications and Information Agency [FAPSI]. The remainder of the KGB was reformed in
1992 as the Ministry of State Security and then became the Federal Counter-Intelligence Service
[FSK] in 1994 and then recast again in 1995 as the Federal Security Service [FSB].124
The FSB was entrusted with the task of penetrating the regular military and weeding out subversion.125 The Soviet
Civil Defense apparatus became the Ministry of Emergency Situations with its own component of
forces.

Professionalism within a military dedicated to the defense of the state from external foes
must be very different from that in organizations intended primarily to combat internal enemies,
subversion, and unrest. As Andrei Kokoshin has pointed out, "The entire ideology of the army
above all is directed toward repulsing of external aggression."126 Use of the armed forces to deal with
internal disorders must be an extraordinary matter, coming into play only when the organs of state
security cannot fulfill that function alone. This fundamental difference in focus is especially the case
with regard to those forces tracing their origins to the competent organs of state security, i.e., the
KGB and MVD. Military professionalism is based on a profound silence within the state, an
apolitical stance. The professionalism of the internal organs of state security rests upon policing
society in all its activities and is fundamentally political. Indeed, one could argue that in a weak
state without the rule of law this policing function is inherently hostile to an open society and the
rights of the individual citizen precisely because it relies upon the arbitrariness of executive power.
Thus, military pluralism has at its base this professional distinction, and contains within itself a
profound contradiction of the basic direction of Russian internal reform toward a market economy,
open society, and democratic polity. It has been a significant contributing factor to the bureaucratic
conflicts among Russia's power ministries.

Each of these successor institutions ended up with their own military units and, along with
the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, grew as the regular Armed Forces shrank.
These militaries, all nominally subordinated to the President, in fact, owed their loyalties to
competing bureaucratic-institutional entities involved in a bitter competition for scarce resources and
became infected with partisan conflict. At the top of the edifice are the power ministries (Defense,
Internal Affairs, the Federal Security Service, and Border Guards). But there are also many other
institutions, agencies and groups with various armed hosts under their operational control. The
December 1993 Constitution makes the President the Commander-in-Chief of all forces and provides
little in the way of effective checks and balances on this executive authority. Indeed, The Law on
Defense, approved by the Federation Council and the State Duma and signed by President Yeltsin
in May 1996, grants considerable powers to the President and the administration and radically
reduces the powers of the Federal Assembly over defense - in comparison with the law on defense
of 1992. Of the two houses of the Federal Assembly, the upper or Federation Council retains
oversight of the defense budget and other legislation of the State Duma. It confirms presidential
degrees ordering martial law within the territories of the federation, and must approve the use of
troops outside the borders of Russia, The State Duma or lower house has even less power than the
Federation Council and can only review the defense budget and enact other federal laws in the area
of defense.127 Even the government and President's Security Council have found it difficult to
exercise effective control over these organs, which combine security, paramilitary, and political
functions. As Vasily Andreev observed, these organs were deeply involved in the politics of the last
year's presidential elections.

On the other hand, the president, and the government and parliament as well, are forced to
deal with a community of security services (the FSB, the SVR, FAPSI, the SBP and GUO,
and the GRU), which has its own interests in the country's political life. The absence of a
clear legal base, and of any control from the legislative and executive branches and public
opinion, ensured that the security services would have their attention fixed exclusively on
the president and the political interests of their leaders in the presidential elections.128

The manipulation of the relations among the "power ministries and agencies" and the creation
and strengthening of multiple militaries have contributed to greater political instability and
uncertainty about the role of the militaries in a crisis situation. This military pluralism has worked
well as long as Yeltsin was in charge and kept the various players in some dynamic balance. The
system has gone into deep crisis when it is expected to act as a unified, professional force in the
conduct of military operations or when the President is not able to exercise direct control of the
system. Given the constitutional arrangements for a strong presidency approved in December 1993
and the prospect that Yeltsin might not be able to play that role, the various power ministers jockey
for position. The removal of senior security officials over the last two years in connection with
coups and rumors of coups underscores the instability of this system if the issue of leadership is
unresolved. The resignation/firing of General Nikolaev, Commander of the Border Guard Service
in December 1997, and then Kulikov in March and Nikolai Kovalev, the Director of the Federal
Security Service, in late July have taken on another character, suggesting a sorting out of the power
ministries, even their demilitarization. Whether intentional or accidental, these removals have
facilitated more effective central control of their military and paramilitary forces. But it has not
removed the problem of their control in times of crisis, when various political factions maneuver for
their support or neutrality.129

Under current conditions, the question of who was the patron behind Kulikov's advancement
in early 1997 or the enemy who secured his removal does not matter. Both were matters of high
politics within the President's entourage. Down to his firing in March 1998 there was no greater
Yeltsin loyalist than Kulikov. The fact that the liberal/reformist press was hostile to Kulikov and
the CPRF - nationalist press was generally favorable might suggest the possibility that Kulikov was
expected to play the role of an honest broker among the competing political factions as he did in the
spring when he refused to support General Aleksandr Korzhakov's plans to postpone presidential
elections.130 Kulikov managed to build a very powerful military-bureaucratic empire based on his
personal loyalty to Yeltsin. In late 1995 he was promoted to the rank of General of the Army for his
efforts to reduce corruption within the Russian police. Kulikov spearheaded the political-military
actions that led to the removal of General Aleksandr Lebed, Russian Army (retired), as Secretary of
the Security Council in October 1996. At the time Kulikov described himself as a different sort
politician:

What is politics? This is involvement in state affairs. I am involved in the molding of
internal policy -- this is the salt of my authority. From this point of view, yes, I can be
considered a politician, but not a public politician. I categorically disagree with this
viewpoint. Do I hew to any party ideology? Do I belong to any political movement? No.131

While Kulikov was not affiliated with any party, he did have an ideology, one connected with his
view of the threats facing the Russian state and society. The core threats to Russia are internal and
arise from challenges to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the state itself.

To Kulikov, Chechnya galvanized the Russian public's view that current internal disorder,
external crisis, and general decline are all tied together. Either Russia hangs together, or the state
and society come apart in a gigantic, unholy mess. Here is how Kulikov put the proposition in
London in May 1995: "I would like to put forward a thesis, possibly erroneous, questionable, but
proceeding from communication with many ordinary Russian citizens, who are far from science and
politics, who work, raise their children and simply want to live. A layman subconsciously perceives
that the tragedy of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Ossetia, Tajikistan, Georgia, Abkhazia, Moldova, Dniester
Region, Azerbaijan, Armenia, [and] Karabakh Region is a tragedy caused by the destruction of state
having a millennial history." This view is populist and even democratic, but calls for stern measures
to restore order. General Kulikov was even more explicit on his analysis of the instability inherent
in the current situation: "The evil of communism is vanquished in Russia by a still worse evil." Since
1991 armed conflicts within FSU states to date have taken 100,000 lives and the count is rising.
Kulikov estimates military casualties from ethno-national conflicts over the next few years will be
as high as 500,000, refugee total up to 22 million, 90 million will face hunger, 4 million will die of
illnesses. Maintaining Russia's territorial integrity here is linked to reducing this threat and tied to
restoring order in FSU. External threats to unity are real and permanent. Kulikov, "Its [Russia's]
entire history witnesses incessant attempts to break the integrity of Russia, to divide it into weak
state formations unfit for independent political existence." The territorial integrity of Russia is the
chief brake on a further decline into disorder. Accepting these assumptions, Lebed's moves to end
the war in Chechnya and save the army in August 1996 came close to treason because they threaten
the existence of the state itself. The tenor of their dispute was thus much more than bureaucratic or
even electoral politics. Sergei Kurginyan, the head of the "Experimental Creative Center," with close
ties to the Kulikov and the MVD has spoken of terrorism as the most serious threat to Russia's
stability and linked together the Chechen resistance, non-governmental paramilitary formations, and
organized crime:

In Russia many party-ideological structures have existed for a long time. By now these
structures have acquired their own armed formations. The majority of them are in a half
preserved state under the "roof" [krysha] of various types of private security firms and
subunits.

But it is a well-known fact that part of these formations are deeply ideological, while others,
unfortunately, have already tasted the "easy bread" of racketeering. It is also know that the
tentacles of all spets-terrorist, international organizations, i.e., the Black, Islamic, and Green,
are reaching into all regions of Russia.132

Kulikov saw his function in internal politics as creating the domestic stability for state and
society. As he declared:

I am not going to go into any politics as you understand them. God speed me to cope with
my duties. You see the problems yourself. But there is just one single goal: To convince
people that they can trust the authorities. I am very much afraid, I simply fear lest the people
once again shudder at the word "MVD" [abbreviation for the Internal Affairs Ministry] and
lower their voices to a whisper when speaking candidly. This was a terrible period, an era
of the Inquisition. Yet the democratic process is irreversible, and the MVD can do much to
accelerate it.133

By adding the Tax Police, Custom's Service and economic police to his span of control in early 1997
he achieved significant potential leverage over the financial markets, banking system and economy.

Behind these "police" functions in support of civil authority, Kulikov retained control of a
large military force. Kulikov has been able to build a powerful political-military instrument in the
VVMVD, which numbered 264,000 in 1996. Valery Borisenko, writing in early 1996, stated that
General Kulikov then commanded 29 divisions and 15 brigades, a force that would seem to rival the
Ground Forces of the Ministry of Defense in size, if not combat capabilities.134 These troops are
better and more regularly paid than most of the Armed Forces. Their mission, support of executive
authority, explicitly entails internal military intervention. Because of the forces at his disposal,
regular police, special police, and VVMVD Kulikov was probably the only man who could prevent
a coup or run a coup in Russia. Until recently the VVMVD was a light force that could not sustained
combat -- it lacked artillery, heavy, armor, and aviation and was optimized for domestic intervention
and military support of executive authority. Recently, it gained access to armor, artillery and
aviation. This went hand-in-hand with the concentration of control of VVMVD formations and other
specialized rapid-reaction formations in Moscow Oblast' to the Minister's personal control.135

Kulikov is a professional soldier, graduate of the General Staff Academy, and an intelligent
and dynamic leader of men. He is also a powerful supporter of the idea of Russian national unity
and territorial integrity. His VVMVD have played the role of sustaining both. He supported the war
in Chechnya, believes that concessions there will open the door to disintegration of the Russian state,
and is committed to doing what is necessary to protect that state. He was and is an old Caucasian
hand, playing a leading role in the various ethnic-national conflicts in the region. He strongly
supported intervention in Chechnya, served as commander-in-chief of Russian forces in Chechnya
in the post-Grozny period, February-May 1995, and was the last advocate of a continuation of the
war in Moscow, which put him in conflict with Aleksandr Lebed. Indeed, Kulikov admitted later,
after Lebed's removal, that their conflict had begun when the Secretary of the Security Council
demanded the subordination of all the power ministries to him.136

Kulikov had little sympathy for markets and privatization. In February 1996, while he was
CinC Chechnya, Kulikov proposed the nationalization of Russia's fledgling commercial banks to
raise money to cover the debts of the cash-starved Army and Interior Troops, a radical shift in state
economic policy toward a command economy.137 He did not not enjoy great success in conducting
the war against organized crime. The reformist weekly, Itogi, labeled Kulikov's first cut at measures
to deal with economic crime and corruption in the banking systems as "the method of a highway
cop" [gaishnik] and ineffective at best and damaging to the economy at worst.138 The author of that
article accused Kulikov of opposing economic liberalization and putting the blame for the growth
of crime upon it. His response was like that of highway police facing mass violations of traffic
regulations proposed the confiscation of the drivers' licenses of all drivers for a "total and permanent
verification."139 Kulikov was part of a government of men and not laws, and in that sense his
concentration of power at this particular juncture raised some concern. In the wake of Lebed's firing
and political maneuvering that had the look of a state coup, Grigoriy Yavlinky's "Yabloko"
parliamentary faction, demanded his resignation.140
But Kulikov survived and advanced.

By early 1998 it was clear that successful military reform in Russia would depend upon the
ability of the government to bring such internal and paramilitary forces under some sort of unified
command structure. The appointment of Colonel-General Leontiy Shevtsov, the former deputy to
SACEUR and commander of the Russian brigade in IFOR/SFOR, as commander of the VVMVD
in the summer of 1997 was seen by some as the beginning of such reform. Both Shevtsov and the
newly appointed Chief of the General Staff, Colonel-General Kvashnin, were clients of former
Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, with whom Kulikov retained a close working relationship up to
Grachev's firing in the summer of 1996. Colonel-General Shevtsov served as Chief of the Operations
Directorate of the General Staff during the planning of the War in Chechnya and Colonel-General
Kvashnin served as Commander of the North Caucasian Military District. Both worked closely in
those capacities with General Kulikov during the War in Chechnya. With Kulikov's departure in
March General Shevtsov moved from the post of Commander of Internal Troops to coordinator of
MVD and other Russian forces in the North Caucasus.

During Shevtsov's brief tenure as Commander of MVD Internal Troops a campaign did
begin to weed out disciplinary problems and criminal activities. On October 3, 1997, Colonel
Alexander Morin of the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office announced an investigation of 19
criminal cases in the former Dzerzhinsky Division of the MVD. Over half of the 24 suspects -- 12
sergeants and a lieutenant -- were members of the elite Vityaz special forces unit. Morin also
confirmed that Minister of Defense Sergeev and Chief of the General Staff supported his effort to
weed out abuses. An inspection of the division had revealed over 270 criminal acts in this year
alone. Morin denied that the inspection was any part of an effort to undermine Minister Kulikov's
position.141 However, only a few days later the press carried a report of efforts to bring the Internal
Troops under governmental control. In his new post as head of the State Military Inspectorate,
Kokoshin had been charged by President Yeltsin with the task of coordinating reforms of various
Russian Defense and Interior Ministry forces.142) After meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Kulikov
and other power ministers, Kokoshin stated that the task of reform of the Internal Troops was on the
reform agenda. "We have to clarify the tasks of the Internal Troops, make them a more effective and
flexible instrument for guaranteeing law and order and Russia's security."143

On 17 December 1997 President Yeltsin approved the Security Council's "National Security
Blueprint for the Russian Federation," which called for a reorganization of the Russian military to
reduce the burden upon the state.144 The same document defined the key internal threat to Russia
as the instability associated with the crisis of the national economy. On January 2 Kokoshin
announced that the government intended to reduce the number of agencies having armed formations
and singled out the VVMVD for special comment. "Such an important component as Interior
Ministry troops will be reformed. They will assume a somewhat different form." He stated that
Russia would have "a much more compact and natural military organization."145

Kulikov moved to counter this assault on his autonomy. First, although he lost the battle
over defining the primary character of the internal threat to Russia, he did secure a very powerful
endorsement of crime, terrorism, and ethnic conflict as serious dangers to state and society.146 The
same blueprint stressed the role of MVD and other power ministries in safeguarding Russia from
internal threats.

In performing the tasks in preventing and countering internal threats to the Russian
Federation's national security, priority belongs to the Russian Federation of Internal Affairs,
the Russian Federation Federal Security Service, and the Russian Federation Ministry of
Civil Defense, Emergencies and Natural Disasters, which have the appropriate forces,
resources, and organs capable of fulfilling specialized tasks.147

In early February Kulikov addressed a public meeting of security experts and state officials,
sponsored by the Academy of Military Sciences. At that time he openly broke with key features of
the government's design for military reform. Kulikov noted that economic hardship and fiscal
necessity was causing military reform to skid toward reductions of the armed forces and other
military formations. This had to be the case because only economically well-off countries could
carry through successful military reform. In this harsh environment the real task had to be
preserving combat capabilities of the armed forces and other militaries. Moreover, Kulikov called
for Russia not to confine its preparations for local conflicts but to prepare also for protracted war.
To this end he recommended maintaining conscription with a 70-30 split between professional and
conscript personnel in peacetime. Moreover, he proposed to incorporate officers forced into
retirement into the tax inspectorate and tax police, giving them additional compensation and
expecting of that they would return periodically for combat training. He also proposed several major
reforms in the conscription system to make it more appealing to young people and more effective
for training purposes. In this manner Kulikov proposes to sustain a mobilization base for protracted
hostilities. His program for maintaining Russia's combat capabilities echoed the sentiment of
General-Colonel Lev Rokhlin's Movement for the Preservation of the Armed Forces, Military
Science and Military Industry, an outspoken critic of President Yeltsin. Kulikov singled out for
preservation "military science and officer cadres, without which we would not be able to quickly
revive the army and navy up to standards required for the Russian state, so as to preclude the
situation we now have in Iraq."148

The reference to Iraq was a veiled warning that a weak Russia could face intimidation from
the West, especially the United States, if it did not retain sufficient combat capabilities for protracted
war. These references mirrored the sentiments of the Duma's nationalist-communist opposition,
which passed a resolution that called on Russia to break with UN's sanctions against Iraq if force
was employed against Iraq. At the same time a parliamentary delegation, led by Vladimir
Zhirinovsky, left Moscow for Baghdad. Zhirinovsky spoke of sending Russian SAMs "to defend
Iraqi skies from American bombers." The explicit references to military science and officer cadres
linked Kulikov to Rokhlin's opposition movement campaigning for the removal of the President
and his government as a betrayer of Russian national interests and Western agents of influence.149
Such positions, according to Aleksandr Yanov, are the ideological work of "the industry of imperial
nationalism" in Russia.150 Kulikov in his bureaucratic struggle against the concept of military
reform put forward by Kokoshin and his allies not only staked out a different position but sought to
enlist the national-communist opposition as his allies..

Kulikov lost his struggle over military reform when President fired him. Kokoshin won a
temporary victory, thanks to President Yeltsin's actions. Subsequent actions suggested some
progress in bringing the MVD and the other power ministries with paramilitary forces under
effective civilian control. In December the Duma passed the "Law on Government" which placed
the "power ministries" within the government. It is in this context that the mandate for reform
Yeltsin originally gave to Prime Minister Chernomyrdin and Kokoshin and then to Prime Minister
Kiriyenko and Kokoshin took on a new content and seemingly had shifted the correlation of forces.
The Russian government undertook certain steps to realize military reform. After three months of
internal debate and coordination among ministries and agencies, President Yeltsin signed "The
Foundations (Concept) of the State Policy on Military Development for the Period Until 2005."
According to Andrei Kokoshin, the Secretary of the Security Council, the document: 1) posits that
Russia's nuclear capabilities reduce the risk of general war, 2) identifies local wars as the most
immediate military threat to Russian security, 3) provided for a reduced size and role for Border
Guards and Internal Troops, 4) commits the armed forces of the Ministry of Defense to supporting
those forces in internal crises; 5) granted to the General Staff the coordination of all militaries; 6)
demilitarizes the Border Guards Service and makes its recruitment based on contract, 7) provides
for a ground force of ten, high-readiness divisions -- one of them peacekeeping - to respond to local
conflicts and crises, and 8) looks to the replacement of the existing military districts with six
military-administrative zones.151 Kokoshin reported that the "Foundations" document would be
followed by another document, "The Military Doctrine of Russia," which will replace that of
November 1993 and be ready "presumably" in the fall of this year.152 Kokoshin also tied the
"Foundations" to lessons learned from the military debacle in Chechnya and called attention to the
joint command and staff exercise conducted last week by the Armed Forces, Internal Troops, Federal
Security Service, and other security services in Stavropol Krai , Dagestan and North Ossetia, which
"reflected the concepts spelled out in the new defense documents."153

This command and staff exercise, which involved 15,000 men, was coordinated by Colonel-General Leontiy Shevtsov, current coordinator of Russian Internal forces in the North Caucasus.154
Shevtsov is an experienced military planner, having served as Chief of the Operations Directorate
of the General Staff during the War in Chechnya. Minister of Internal Affairs Sergei Stepashin, who
replaced Kulikov, stated that the summer command and staff exercise was not a prelude to the
launching of military operations, but stressed the exercise's joint character: "the situation in the
North Caucasus makes it imperative that narrow departmental interests do not impede practical
work."155 By linking concept and actual staff training these recent developments do suggest some
progress in military reform. The issue was whether these action would provide sufficient momentum
to move military reform forward in a timely and sustained manner. Funding remains the Achilles
heel of progress toward military reform. The current economic crisis and budgetary shortfall will
not only make military reform more difficult but also raise the prospect of the sort of political crisis
that could lead to a change of government.

Kokoshin's political gamble during the dual economic and political crises of August-September seems to have been a desparate attempt to avert the worst consequences of the August
Crash for the economy and state finances and, therefore, a move to maintain momentum for military
reform. Kokoshin's removal from the Security Council ended his career as an official in the Yeltsin
administration, just as it marked him a political operative identified with the presidential ambitions
of Moscow mayor Yuriy Luzhkov. At the same time he retains his role as defense scholar and
analyst, having assumed a position with the Academy of Sciences. In this capacity he will be one
of those involved in the struggle to shape the transformation of the Russian military in the post-Yeltsin era. Here the question of the nature of future war, i.e., potential opponents, probably theaters
of military actions, and character of conflict, takes on paramount importance.

The Kokoshin - Dugin Connection

Kokoshin's ideas on military reform are antithetical to those of the ideologues of the Red-Brown [national-communist]. General-Major Viktor Ivanovich Filatov, Soviet Army (retired) and
now press secretary to Vladimir Zhirinovsky, as the editor of Military-Historical Journal from 1988
to 1991 turned that publication into a mass publication devoted to opposing perestroyka and reform
and promoting the militarization of Russian culture and society. In December 1990 I asked Filatov
who would be the worst possible candidate for Minister of Defense to replace his patron, Marshal
Dmitriy Yazov, Filatov replied immediately, "Kokoshin for Minister and General V. N. Lobov for
Chief of the General Staff."156 He made clear that they were his political and ideological opponents,
a feeling that is reciprocated. On his appointment as Chief of the Soviet General Staff after the failed
putsch of August 1991 one of General Lobov's first acts was to fire Filatov. Since 1991 national-communists have had good reason to identify Kokoshin as one of their ideological opponents.
Kokoshin joined those seeking to build a new Russia, prosperous, secure, and a great power in a
multipolar world. While this does not mean he would accept for Russia some junior partner status
in a unipolar world, it puts him at odds with their objectives to restoration of the union or empire and
the renewal of the global competition with the United States and the West. One of the most
important ideological proponents of this view is Aleksandr Gel'evich Dugin. Dugin's views are not
so much a coherent view of the military-technical aspects of futur war and military reform as it is
Russia's geopolitical destiny that appeals to many in the military, who are seeking a threat.

The chosen battleground is the immensely popular domain of "geopolitics" with its wide and
diverse interpretation of what that term means for Russian defense and security policy. In its most
benign form geopolitics represents simply a pragmatic escape from the ideological assumptions of
Marxism-Leninism and a search for a security policy that takes into account Russian vital interests
in the various regional security systems in which Russia must operate. Rear Admiral V. S. Pirumov,
Russian Navy (retired), head of the Section on Geopolitics and Strategy of the Academy of Natural
Sciences and former Chairman of Scientific Council of the Russian Security Council, provided such
a benign definition of geopolitics as "a science concerned with socio-economic and political
processes in their inter-relations, and with the systemic influence of the natural environment on state
power."157 In its ominous form geopolitics represents nothing less than a revanchist ideology, anti-Western and imperial in form and content. Whichever position comes to dominate Russian security
policy, it will address the Revolution in Military Affairs and seek to modernize Russian forces in a
manner in keeping with its threat perceptions, political objectives and ideological assumptions.

Dugin is a generation younger than Kokoshin, having been born in 1962. In 1979 he enrolled
at the Moscow Aviation Institute but never completed the course. Over the next decade by his own
account he engaged in his self-education, mastering nine languages in the process. In 1989 he
founded the Center for Meta-Strategic Research. His first articles appeared in Aleksandr
Prokhanov's newspaper Den'. The same year Dugin founded the Arktogeya Press, devoted to
historical-religious studies of Aryanism. In 1992 he began to edit the journal Elementy, which he
called the voice of the "new right." In 1993 he teamed up with the "punk" writer, Edvard Limonov,
to found the National-Bolshevik Party and became one of its chief ideologues. In 1995 he ran
unsuccessfully as one of the Party's candidates for the State Duma from St. Petersburg. He has been
a prolific author with eight books devoted to a wide range of topics.158 In his most important recent
work, Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia, Dugin provides an
ideological-geopolitical basis for an on-going conflict between Atlanticism and globalism
[mondializm] and Russian Eurasianism.159 In this interpretation a conflict between the United States,
as a thalassocracy, and Russia, as a telluocracy, is inevitable.160 Dugin, a self-styled "conservative
revolutionary," rejects both liberal democracy and communism in favor of a third path. Russia's
current reformers are no more than "agents of Western influence."161 Aleksandr Yanov has noted
the manichean character of Dugin's, his tendency to see secret conspiracies as the driving force
behind history, and his identification with Fascist thought and thinkers.162 While Dugin has
cultivated ties with some inside the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff he did not develop
links with Kulikov and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Dugin's own explanation of this for this
situation is simple: ". . . the logic of the MVD is very far removed from geopolitics."163

Dugin's geopolitics call for the creation of a sweeping Eurasian alliance from the Maghreb
to the Far East to recast the balance of power against globalism. In military terms this third path
rejects the current proposals for military reform in Russia because they would transform the armed
forces into those of a regional power. Instead, Dugin proposes to create an army of empire. These
forces would emphasis high technology and global systems to contest with the United States. Thus,
nuclear weapons, strategic defense, space assets, naval, missile, and strategic aviation forces get top
priority. Ground forces are treated as internal forces and only airborne forces are given serious
attention.164 While some points in this military program sound very much like those of Russia's
current reformers, the context of a renewed global military competition is quite different. For Dugin
geopolitics defines the constant for Russian foreign and defense policy, and for its military doctrine
the core reality is that "the main 'potential enemy' is namely the Atlantic Bloc."165

Dugin has found support among a wide range of national-communist groups. His volume on
geopolitics was funded by The International Fund for the Development of Regions and The Union
for the Re-Birth of the North, "Polar Russia," and carried an advertisement from Orientir, a journal
of the Russian Ministry of Defense and the successor to Communist of the Armed Forces. General-Lieutenant Nikolay Pavlovich Klokotov, Russian Army (retired), has described the book as not
containing any extremist ideas but really only giving expression to "the objective confrontation of
the two distinct systems." Klokotov, who held the Chair of Strategy at the Academy of the General
Staff from 1988 to 1996, has stated that three chairs in that academy are now using Dugin's book.
Former Defense Minister Rodionov is reported to have invited Dugin to speak at the Academy when
he was its commandant.166 The conservative revolutionary bias with its Eurasian axes is a more
respectable form of Zhirinovsky's argument for empire as the only way to secure the living space
of the Russian people.167 In a recent round-table, organized by Prokhanov's Zavtra and devoted to
Zbigniew Brzezinski's recent article on post-Cold War geopolitics in Foreign Affairs, Dugin spoke
of revolutionary chaos, nihilism and partisan war as the first steps in a new struggle against
Westernism. "In principle, Eurasia and our space remain the staging area [platsdarm] of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution. In this regard our goal, our imperative, does not depend on
who governs us." Russia's current elite is nothing more than Western "agents of influence" and their
political maneuvers are irrelevant. His is a cosmic struggle of the "Absolute Revolution against
Fate, against the contemporary world as the world of the Anti-Christ." 168 Thus, Kokoshin and Dugin
stand at the opposite polls of the current debate on future war. Kokoshin is seeking to reform the
Russian armed forces and to promote Russian national interests with the goal of integrating Russia
into the community of nations as another great power. Dugin will not be satisfied unless an imperial
Russia leads Eurasia into another manichean struggle with the West. This ideological divergence
creates a chasm in the Russian polity that cannot be bridged. Stability and prosperity can, if given
time, erode the manichean impulse of the national-communist by marginalizing their appeal.
Instability, economic stagnation and collapse, crime, and corruption can strengthen their hand and
give their manicheanism greater appeal. Dugin's geopolitical imperatives of a struggle against
American "hegemony" and a restoration of Russian hegemony over the "Eurasian Heartland" [in
English in the original Russian text] can be found in the recent volume on military reform, edited
by Gennadiy Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The threat
to Russia is the United States and NATO expansion, and military reform should have as its objective
the creation of forces to counter that threat.169

The book not only proclaims a struggle between heartland and rimland, in which the United States, its NATO allies, and Japan are preparing to
expand their control, but are also preparing to intervene n the domestic affairs of the post-Soviet
successor states and to radcially reduce Russian influence in the Commonwealh of Independent
States. Zyuganov and his co-authors see a re-militarization of the renewed East-West confrontation
as necessary for the protection of Russian interests in this sturggle.170

Conclusion

This essay has covered much ground historically and politically in its examination of
Kokoshin's role in the current politics of military refrom and the associated debate over future war.
Kokoshin's ties to civilian and military thinkers who have studied the problem of future war provide
valuable insights into his own position as he seeks to move military reform in Russian forward. Few
figures can claim the connections that he has with past studies of future war. Few were so connected
to the leading contemporary students of future war or have had so firm a grasp of the RMA and its
military-technical implications. Few have written so eloquently on the problem of civilian control
of the military. Few have understood the need for a Russian policy of recuelliement and internal
reform to link Russia to the global economic and technological changes associated with the birth of
information societies.

As late as early August of this year, Kokoshin seemed to have won a bureaucratic battle with
one of the most powerful potentates in the Yeltsin entourage over the very definition of the threat
to Russia and the direction of military reform. His removal cast those gains into doubt. Given the
economic and political crises facing Russia and the chronic political instability that has marked its
government since Yeltsin's re-election in 1996, it is unclear whether such bureaucratic successes will
survive his removal or have much impact on the chances for military reform. Lesser men now
struggle with military reform. Future war is not on their radar scope. Should Russia emerge from
turmoil, it will need men of vision, the Kokoshins, to build a new military based on the RMA to
meet the challenges of the future. As his first statements in support of Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's
"Fatherland" movement suggest, Kokoshin remains committed to reviving key industries at the heart
of the defense sector - rocket industry, nuclear energy, and heavy industry- machine-engineering --
by enlarging exports in these areas. The outcome of such a policy would be world-class research and
development base to support a military sufficiently powerful to guarantee Russia's status as a "world
power."171 Waiting in the wings, should the effort at reform fail, is a new manicheanism that would
seek to recreate an empire in Eurasia and renew the East-West confrontation on new grounds.

7. Reform of the Armed Forces refers to measures directed at the military forces under the control
of the Ministry of Defense, while military reform embraces all the military and paramilitary
forces of all the so-called "power ministries" and includes the restructuring of the military-industrial complex and the national system of industrial mobilization.

17. The very best study of Bloch and his career is: Ryszard Kolodziejczyk, Jan Bloch (1836-1902)
(Warsaw: Panstwowy Institut Wydawniczy, 1983).

18. Lenin also saw the relationship between war and revolution and concluded that war was the
catalyst for the revolution that he sought. See: Jacob W. Kipp, "Lenin and Clausewitz: The
Militarization of Marxism," revised version of article republished with permission of The Journal
of Military History for inclusion in: Philip S. Gillette and Willard C. Frank, Jr., eds. Soviet
Military Doctrine, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1992, pp. 63-84.

26. Christopher Bellamy, The Evolution of Modern Land Warfare (London: Routledge, 1990), pp.
242-243. For the views of the author on this topic see: Jacob W. Kipp, "The Evolution of Soviet
Operational Art: The Significance of 'Strategic Defense' and 'Premeditated Defense' in the
Conduct of Theatre-Strategic Operations," The Journal of Soviet Military Studies IV, No. 4
(December 1991), pp. 629-648; and "Soviet Military Foresight and Forecasting in an Era of
Restructuring," in: Derek Leebaert and Timothy Dickinson, eds., Soviet Strategy and New
Military Thinking (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 248-275.

27. A. A. Kokoshin, V poiskakh vykhoda: Voyenno-politicheskie aspekty mezhdunarodnye
bezopasnosti (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo politicheskoy literatury, 1989), p. 6. It is interesting that
Kokoshin did not mention Bloch in either this work or his later work on the army and politics.
He did address war prevention and foresight as critical elements of military-political studies, but
here he invoked dialectical and historical materialism and "leninist teachings about war and
peace." Kokoshin cited Friederich Engels' forecast on a future general war in Europe, its nature,
scale, and, what is esepcially important, its consequences." [p. 6]

70. Committee of Soviet Scientists in the Defense of Peace and against the Threat of Nuclear War,"
Annotsiya," [uncirculated report of Soviet paper delivered at Pugwash Conference in
Washington, DC, in 1984/ 14, prilozhenie 2.

123. The Soviet system had three power pillars: the Party and its apparatus, the Security services,
composed of the KGB and MVD, and the Armed Forces. It was the conservative leadership of
these institutions which sought to reverse perestroyka and restore order in the summer of 1991 to
preempt a new union treaty, which led to the August Putsch and the end of the Soviet Union.

126. Kokoshin, Armiya i politika, p. 258. Although signed to press in August 1995 and published
later that year, this book by the First Deputy Minister of Defense contains not a single reference
to the War in Chechnya, which had become so divisive an issue in the Russian polity, society,
and Armed Forces.

128. Andreev, "The Russian Security Services and Their Participation in the 1996

Presidential Elections," p. 4.

129. Regarding Nikolaev's resignation/dismissal in December 1997 see: Il'ya Bulavinov,
"Komandiry v deputatskom korpuse," Kommersant Vlast', No. 26 [278] (14 July 1998), p. 18.
Nominal explanation of the resignation was President Yeltsin's confirmation of the movement of
a Russian post on the border with Georgia 1400 meters inside Russia. Observers pointed out,
however, that Nikolaev was not satisfied with changes being imposed upon the Border Guard
Service. The firings of Kulikov, Chernomyrdin, and Chubais in March 1998 is a very murky
affair. and the reasons for the removal of Kovalev from the command of the FSB is also very
unclear. The point is that three chiefs of power ministries were removed in the last eight months.

134. Valery Borisenko, "Gendarmerie or Army?" Moscow News, No. 9 (February 15-21, 1996), p.
3. The actual number of divisions inside the MVD, as reported by Colonel-General Anatoliy
Afanaso'evich Shkirko, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and C-in-C Internal Troops, to be
"20 divisions and 29 independent brigades, regiments and battalions totaling 257,000 men." See:
"Anatoliy Shkirko, "V gosudarstve dolzhny tsarit' tishina i spokoystvie," Nezavisimoe voyennoe
obozrenie, (22-28 March 1997), p. 1. The Internal Troops are in their armaments, organization
and training a gendarmerie. If they most engage in heavy combat, as was the case in Chechnya,
tank and artillery subunits of the ground forces are attached to their units. For the sake of
comparison, estimates of strength of the ground forces of the Russian Army before the recently
announced cuts were 730,000 billets and 460,000 men in service.

146. Rossiyskaya gazeta, (30 December 1997), p. 5. The document bore the character of an
interagency compromise in which each of the power ministries managed to get some mention of
its particular roles and missions.

156. Interview with General-Major Filatov in the editorial offices of Voyenno-istoricheskiy zhurnal,
Moscow, 10 December 1990.

157. V. S. Pirumov, "Some Elements of Research Methodology Related to the problem of National
Security under Present Conditions," in: General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces, Military
Doctrine and Military Reconstruction in Post-Confrontational Europe (Prague: Vojenske
rozhledy/Czech Military Review, 1994), p. 200.

161. Ibid., pp. 439-448. On Dugin's views on the third path as uniting the extreme left and right in
an assault on a liberal democratic order in the name of "the Absolute Revolution" see: Aleksandr
Dugin, Konservativnaya revolyutsiya (Moscow: "Arktogeya," 1994), pp. 319ff.